Acacia Strain
Photo: Karen Jerzyk

Vincent Bennett, frontman for Massachusetts metallers the Acacia Strain, knows he can't sing, and he's perfectly fine with that. If he's not belching out his lyrics, he's not opening his mouth onstage or in the studio. Cleaning up his gut-spewing vocal style simply isn't an option for him — even if he did want to embrace the trend, like so many of his contemporaries have.

"To be honest, I've never thought about doing that," Bennett confessed last week, as the band's van was making its way through Oregon, where Acacia had to stop as an unexpected blizzard passed. "I just don't see us as that kind of band — at all. It's one of those things where a lot of bands do it, and they get away with it and it sounds really f---ing good and kids are psyched on it. Then there's those bands that do it, and everybody gets really f---ing bummed. I just don't ever see us being that kind of band. I understand that if we did do it, we might sell some more records, or if I sang about Jesus and being in love all the time, how we might sell some more records. But that's not the kind of band we are. I think our fans would be bummed out if we even tried to do that. Hell, I'd be bummed out."

So, basically, don't expect any sea changes on the band's forthcoming LP, Continent, which the group recently finished tracking and which is scheduled for an August 19 release. But you can expect to hear a more mature Acacia Strain, he said.

"We sound pretty much the same, but we change things up at the same time," he said. "The old fans will definitely think in their head, 'This is the Acacia Strain,' but the new people, and even people who weren't fans before, they'll come away from it saying, 'Wow, they really did mature as a band.' We have changed a lot of influences for the new record, so it's pretty different for everybody in the band. I'm excited about it."

Produced by Zeuss (Shadows Fall, Hatebreed), Continent will include the cuts "Dr. Doom" and "Skynet." It is Acacia's "darkest" effort to date, said Bennett, and even features the Human Furnace, of Ringworm fame, on the track "Baby Buster."

"For this record, I basically exiled myself from everything just to write the lyrics," Bennett explained. "It's definitely the most work we've put into a record, and it's the only record that I'm actually excited to say I'm proud of."

Continent is a conceptual work of sorts: The lyrics revolve around a single man who has a disastrous effect on the rest of humankind.

"It's about a person purposely pulling themselves away from everything, and exiling themselves from humanity — just sitting back and watching," he said. "And then, this person comes back to the forefront, and becomes the apocalyptic reason for the end of the world. This one person just completely wipes out everything — all life on the planet — and ends up being the last person to survive all of this. So, he just walks the Earth for the rest of his life, alone."

Writing material for Continent did present numerous challenges, Bennett said. But the biggest struggle for Acacia was coming up with "original ideas — especially given the genre we're in. The market's basically flooded, and coming up with new ideas that bands haven't already done, or bands aren't currently doing, it's just really rough.

"We're just trying to pull through and make our own way," the vocalist continued. "We're not trying to reinvent the wheel, and we're not coming out saying, 'We're the most original band of our genre.' But we are trying to breathe new life into it. A lot of bands out there are just nailing the coffin shut on the whole extreme music industry, and we're trying not to do that. It's such a mess now. Everybody's band is getting signed, and there are 500 bands on each label, and they're all doing the same thing. It's hard to do sh-- that hasn't been done, so we're just trying to mix it up a little bit."

This fall, Bennett said, the Acacia Strain will be touring ad nauseam — first, as an opening act, and then, closer to the end of the year, heading out for a headlining run of their own. He wouldn't discuss the band's touring plans at length, because both tours were still being mapped out and confirmed. But whenever Acacia is done logging miles, Bennett said, he'll return to his other band, Co--punch.

"The dudes are at home right now, and they'll be recording some stuff while I'm out on the road, and then I'll just go back and record vocals," he said. "We're going to be putting out a 10 7-inch series over the next year, and we're doing an album of covers. We want to do 'Wolverine Blues' by Entombed, 'Mandibles' by E. Town Concrete, and we're going to do a NOFX cover, and a Misfits cover.

"Co--punch is my fun band," he said. "It helps me get away from the mediocrity of serious touring life. It's my hobby band — it's always good to have something on the side, to just get away from it all."

The rest of the week's metal news:

In case you missed it, MTV News was in San Antonio, Texas, last weekend, for the Sacrifice of the Nazarene Child festival, where Profanatica performed for the first time since 2001. ...

Perhaps the week's best news came on Wednesday, when it was revealed that the reunited Carcass had finally booked a U.S. gig. Necrophagist, Aborted and Suffocation will open for Carcass on September 6 in New York. Tickets go on sale July 11. The band is expected to announce additional American dates in the coming months. ...

Finally, reunited metallers Overcast have cemented a release date for their Reborn to Kill Again set, which will feature re-recorded versions of more than a dozen of the influential band's classic tunes, along with two previously unreleased tracks. The effort will drop August 19 through Metal Blade Records, nearly two years after it was recorded. ...

Glenn Danzig's annual Blackest of the Black tour returns this October, with Danzig headlining, of course. Dimmu Borgir, Moonspell, Winds of Plague and Skeletonwitch have been tapped as direct support. The trek gets under way October 9 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and runs through November 10 in San Francisco. ...

Thrash outfit Warbringer are on the hunt for a new drummer after amicably parting with Ryan Bates recently. Bates will vacate following their scheduled tour dates. Think you could take over behind the kit? Head on over to the band's MySpace page, and let 'em know you're interested. ...

Himsa have called it quits after 10 years as a band. "Having sacrificed everything we had in order to ensure the band's survival, it's time to let it go," the band said in a statement. "We're getting along, we've toured, and we're fine. It's all good. We're leaving it at that." Himsa play their final show August 16 at the El Corazon in their native Seattle.

• The Acacia Strain

Disturbed's David Draiman and Dan Donegan
Photo: Frank Micelotta/ Getty Images

Last week, Australia's Beat magazine ran an article on New Jersey's Dillinger Escape Plan, in which guitarist Ben Weinman said he'd once witnessed one of Disturbed's soundchecks and spotted something rather curious. "[They were] practicing where they were going to walk and when they were going to put their leg up on the monitor and pose," Weinman said. "That was weird for us. There are times [during live gigs] where I don't even know where I am."

Weinman's remarks were an obvious dig at Disturbed, who release their fourth studio effort, Indestructible, on June 3. It's not the first time Dillinger have started beef with a band, and it probably won't be the last. But when asked about the claims about their "onstage posing," Disturbed guitarist Dan Donegan seemed stupefied.

"I never even remember meeting these guys, and I think we know anybody that's even in the room during our soundchecks, so that's shocking to me, because I would think that we would have met them if they were standing there during our soundcheck," Donegan said. "That's funny. When we do a bigger production, there may be certain lighting cues for certain highlights of the show, but I wouldn't call it 'posing,' just a cue for our lighting guy, so he can add more drama to the set. If [Dillinger] sold some records, and were at the level we're at, maybe they'd see that, for bands like Kiss and Metallica, there are certain highlight points during a set that you want to focus on. If I'm going to go over to one spot and do a guitar solo, my lighting guy may need to know that, so he can focus in on that.

"If that's posing, then so be it," the guitarist continued. "To me, I don't think we talk about when we're going to put our foot up on a monitor. That's just silly. It's a natural thing we do. Those guys can say whatever they want. If that's supposed to be a jab at us, am I offended? I don't give a sh--. If they're saying it because they're haters, why? Because we sell millions of records and lots of tickets? It sounds more like jealousy to me."

Plus, Donegan points out, Disturbed's stage shows often feature pyrotechnics displays — as they will this summer, when the band co-headlines the inaugural Rockstar Energy Mayhem Fest with Slipknot. "We have millions of fans, and we find ways to connect with them," he added. "We utilize theatrics and pyro, so we have to rehearse where the pyro is going to go off, because we don't want to have a James Hetfield moment and get caught in the flame. But that's something Dillinger Escape Plan would know nothing about, because they don't play arenas —: they play clubs."

Now that that's all sorted out, there's new material to be discussed: Indestructible, an album Donegan feels is Disturbed's finest achievement to date.

"To us, its even heavier than [2005's] Ten Thousand Fists, and there's more attitude to it," he said. "I know 'heavy' is a relative term, but to me, heavy isn't just Cookie Monster vocals and playing as fast as you can. Heavy metal, to me, was the classic metal bands like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest — guitar- driven bands with powerful, melodic vocals. [Frontman] David [Draiman] is a melodic singer, like Bruce Dickinson. For these hardcore fans who hear melody in a song and think a band's soft or that we're not metal enough for them, oh well. The metal I grew up on were those classic bands that are still playing today and are respected by everybody. That's the path we've always tried to go down, and we seem to be going down that path."

For Disturbed, the biggest challenge making Indestructible was the production of it. The band decided they wanted to handle it themselves, which their label and management weren't so sure about at first.

"We had to make sure they were OK with us doing it without another set of ears in there — someone who could referee those times where we might be battling it out," he said. "We're just so comfortable with each other, and just so respectful of what each guy's role is in the song writing and recording process, that once we got the first couple of songs tracked, it was enough to keep the label and management out of the way. Removing that producer role had people more on the edge of their seats, just making sure we could handle it that way, without somebody else, and we proved to them — and ourselves — that we can. And it gave us the best record we've made yet."

Thematically, the record's also one of the darkest records the band's churned out. The LP's first single, "Inside the Fire," may be the most personal of all the record's tracks, and the video is a reflection of that, Donegan said. Directed by Nathan Cox, it deals with the same theme the song tackles: suicide.

"It's the darkest song David's written, and it has a personal connection to him; it's about an ex-girlfriend of his, when he was a lot younger, who committed suicide — she overdosed," the guitarist explained. "The video has to do with that same subject, but it's his girlfriend hanging herself. At the front of the video, we wanted to get a suicide prevention hotline number up there, so there's no misinterpretation of what we're saying. We're not condoning suicide, but raising awareness to the issue, so anyone who feels suicidal or is depressed or going through a hard time, hopefully it will hit those people enough to make them know that there's somebody out there willing to listen to them, so maybe they should talk to someone else if they have those feelings."

After this summer's Mayhem Fest, Disturbed plan to head overseas for a few months of live gigs, and will be back in the states before Christmas for a little rest and relaxation. Then, they'll hit the road again with their "Music as a Weapon" tour, which Donegan said is now in the planning stages.

"We continue to evolve as players and songwriters," he said, when asked what fans can expect from Indestructible. "I don't know the magic formula to being able to do it, except that we go into it with the mindset that we're doing it for ourselves and meeting our own expectations. You can't guess what the rest of the world wants. But our fans have proven they're with us, and they're here to stay and we're certainly not going anywhere — whether you like it or not."

The rest of the week's metal news:

Within Chaos and the Destro have been added to this year's Ozzfest, which has been reduced to a one-day destination festival, set for August 9 at Pizza Hut Park in Dallas. The bill also features Metallica, In This Moment, the Sword, Goatwhore, Witchcraft and Soilent Green, among others. Oh, yeah, and they'll be dusting Ozzy off again so he can headline. ...

Norma Jean are in the middle of recording their fourth album, The Anti Mother, with producer Ross Robinson (Glassjaw, At the Drive-In) behind the boards. Slated for release later this summer, the band apparently collaborated on material separately with Helmet's Page Hamilton and Chino Moreno of Deftones. According to a statement from the band, the album's title's derived from "a character we created, which represents anything that is deceptive, and yet possesses an outwardly beautiful nature." ...

Six Feet Under have begun recording new material for their forthcoming Metal Blade Records set. According to the band, "It's great to be back in the studio, and we feel really psyched to lay these new songs down. They are some of the best stuff we have come up with, and [we] can't wait for all of our fans to hear the new stuff." ... The JonBenét have been touring the U.S., road-testing some new material, which they plan to record later this year. The band will be rolling through Anthony, Texas, Friday night (May 16), and dates are booked through June 14 in Austin, Texas. ...

It Dies Today have set Lividity as the title of their next album, which they'll be self-producing for a fall release. ... On August 19, the Acacia Strain will release their forthcoming album, Continent. The disc is being produced by Zeuss, who has worked with the likes of Hatebreed and Shadows Fall.

• Disturbed
• Dillinger Escape Plan
• Norma Jean (Metal)
• The Acacia Strain

Lamb of God
Photo: Frazer Harrison/ Getty Images

Long before the bill for last summer's free Ozzfest was revealed, Metal File spoke with Lamb of God guitarist Chris Adler to gauge his opinion on the long-running fest going gratis. His response wasn't surprising, until a month or so later, when the metallers were named as one of the festival's mainstage acts. That's because the idea, at first, rubbed him the wrong way.

"As a fan, I'm excited. But as an insider, I realize something is funky about it, and I don't know how they're pulling it off," he said at the time. "At the end of the day, someone is getting paid, and to expect the performers to walk up there and do it for free while someone is benefiting from it other than them, that doesn't seem right to me. I love the idea that people can come and see bands they love and not lose their butt on the ticket's price, but for it to be free? You can't tell me the organizers are not making money at the end of the day. To expect the performers to perform for free, it devalues the performer and the living we're trying to make. If you can do it for free now, what was the point of ripping everyone off before?

"It's dangerous, because the young, innovative bands helping metal evolve will get shut out of this whole thing," he continued. "If people expect every show and every piece of music to be free, we will lose the ability to continue to evolve. There will just be the same established acts that can somehow figure out ways to make money."

Last week, Adler — who is in promotion mode for the band's upcoming co-headlining run with Killswitch Engage — defended his earlier statements and said that, in practice, the free tour actually worked out well for Lamb of God and several other bands on the lineup.

"We didn't want to be put into some kind of support slot with restrictions," Adler said. "If you want us to be part of the tour, and you're not going to pay us our market value, and we're going to give 110 percent to every fan that shows up, we have to have our say in how it's done. And they were extremely accommodating to what we wanted to do. The options at the time were to do a headlining tour, which we'd just done with Machine Head and Trivium; [or] to go out with Korn, who had offered us a slot [on the Family Values Tour,] but it [wasn't the offer they had hoped for] or to take this Ozzfest on, to see what happened, and to play in front of an audience who's maybe never seen or heard of us before.

"As a musician, of course I want to make a living and come home and keep the lights on," he added. "But really, the spirit of what I do is share the music we create with people who might be interested in hearing it. So to get in front of an audience that maybe hasn't heard of you before, it would have been irresponsible for us not to do it. In the end, was it undervalued? Were people not paid? Were people struggling to get through the whole tour, including us? Absolutely. Did the fans get their money's worth? Yes. And did we make some new fans out of it? I think so."

Adler said he doesn't think Ozzfest should be free going forward but reiterated that he's glad Lamb of God signed on for the trek last summer.

"How do you turn down main support to Ozzy Osbourne on Ozzfest, playing in L.A. to 55,000 people?" he asked. "That's an experience I'll never forget. For us, I know next year we're not doing anything because we want to write a record, but we thought this year's [Ozzfest] was massively successful and exposed the ... normal Ozzfest fan to something a little deeper in metal than what's out there."

With 2007's Ozzfest behind them, Lamb of God are preparing for the last tour in the cycle for last year's Sacrament. After that, they'll head into hibernation mode and begin work on their next LP, Adler said. The band's upcoming run is a revival of sorts, of the 2003 Headbangers Ball Tour — that trek featured Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage, the latter of whom are co-headlining the new LOG trek, which kicks off November 28 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and runs through December 17 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. DevilDriver and Soilwork will serve as main support for the tour.

"It's the exclamation [point] to the album cycle," Adler explained. "We're going to go away and hibernate for a while after this tour, so we wanted to make it something special — and get back with our friends in Killswitch, especially. On this tour, we want to dig a bit deeper on all of our records, so we're not bored with it. It's important for us to step it up a notch and give people a reason to come out and see us."

Adler said LOG plan to inject into their new set several songs from the self-titled album they released under their previous name, Burn the Priest, in 1999. After the tour, they'll spend some time away from the band, "so we can remember what our wives look like." Then, they'll get serious about writing new material: "It's time for us to put out an unpolished, nasty metal record," the guitarist said.

"Actually, in our talks of this hibernation next year, we've really, all of us, have gone back and revisited the Burn the Priest album and what it meant at the time, and what we can learn from it in going forward to the next record," he continued. "I think it's definitely something we're going to be considering in the writing process. We have some ideas floating around, but nothing cemented or named yet. One of the things we've all done is [gone] backwards in our history and pulled out [2000's] New American Gospel, and the Burn the Priest record, and we want to take the experience we have now as writers and players, and revisit those records — to get back into that headspace again but bring the experience we have now to that process. We want to get a little dirtier, because we don't want to be this homogenized metal band."

Adler said the bandmembers are considering producing the LP themselves but may also consider assembling a team of producers — some they've worked with in the past, some they've never worked with before — to help guide them through the process.

In the meantime, LOG have two releases on the way to hold fans over until the next record, which Adler said could be ready in time for a late 2008 release. This spring, the band will release another DVD, which the guitarist said is the companion disc to the DVD that came with deluxe editions of Sacrament. It will feature tons of tour footage and include "more of the drinking aspect of the band."

Adler also said Sacrament will be reissued on November 27, but in a unique form.

"The label came to us several months ago, right before Ozzfest, and said they wanted to repackage the record with some kind of bonus track and sell it again," he said. "We didn't want to do it. Being fans of music and people who buy music, it always sucked to go buy a record and then two months later, there's another version of it with a live track that you love, and you have to spend your money again. We came back to them and said, 'No, we don't want to do it. Please don't do it. We will be very unhappy if that happens.' They brought us to the table and asked if there was any way we'd feel good about re-releasing Sacrament."

So Adler came up with a rather genius idea. "It will come with a disc of every music file, every instrument, separated, for every song on the record," he said. "The solos, the effects, everything, so that anybody can reassemble them, can cut them up, lay down their own vocals, cut out the drums, do it themselves, produce it better than we did. This is the studio experience of the record, and with any recording program, you'll be able to import these files and do whatever you want with them."

The rest of the week's metal news:

As Killswitch Engage prepare for their tour with Lamb of God, frontman Howard Jones revealed to Metal File his desire to work once again with Blood Has Been Shed, the band he led before replacing Jesse Leach in KSE back in 2002. "We'll probably do something else again," he said. "It's still just [drummer] Justin [Foley] and I, [guitarist] Corey [Unger] and [bassist] John [Lynch], and we'll probably record something again. We might drum up something here, because the band's been around for quite a bit of time, and we need to celebrate our anniversary and put out something — maybe do a few new songs. We'll reconnect at some point, because it's something we've tossed around. It's just a matter of everyone connecting." Meanwhile, Killswitch guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz is continuing to work on his side project, Burn Your Wishes, with Unearth's Ken Susi, Seemless' Dave Pino and Derek Kerswill, and former Poison the Well bassist Iano Dovi. ...

Iron Maiden have pulled back the curtain on the double-DVD release of their classic concert video "Live After Death," which was originally issued in 1985. The new package will come out February 5 and coincide with the beginning of the band's Somewhere Back in Time world tour, which launches February 1 in Mumbai, India. The first DVD captures a 90-minute concert performance at California's Long Beach Arena during 1984's Powerslave tour while the other one contains the second part of the documentary "The History of Iron Maiden" (part one is available on the DVD "The Early Days"). There's a glut of bonus footage too, including an hourlong documentary, interviews and 50 minutes' worth of footage from the band's Queen-supporting set at Rock in Rio in 1985. The total running time of the package is over three hours. "It was one of the first full concerts to be filmed after the advent of video, and of course the live album [of the same name], recorded on a different night to the video, has long been considered to be one of the seminal metal live albums and has sold millions since," the band's longtime manager, Rod Smallwood, said in a statement. "Fans have been begging us to do this DVD for some time now, but we wanted to wait until we were able to re-create that whole tour to go with it." ...

Ex-Guns N' Roses guitarist and masked maniac Buckethead will release a pair of DVDs on December 11. The first, "Young Buckethead," features a complete concert by his old experimental band, Deli Creeps, that was filmed in 1990 at the Cactus Club in San Jose, California. The disc also contains footage under the headers "Buckethead in the Basement" (with the guitarist on synth) and "Buckethead's Backyard Solo" (a 14-minute jam of virtuosic weirdness). For those who can't get enough, the second DVD, "Young Buckethead 2," contains a Deli Creeps show from 1991 at the Kennel Club in San Francisco; the band's debut, at San Francisco's I-Beam in September 1990; and a comedic backstage-monologue feature called "Buckethead in the Park." ... Between the Buried and Me, August Burns Red and Behold ... the Arctopus will launch a three-week tour on November 29 in Charleston, South Carolina. Dates run through December 16 in Asheville, North Carolina. ...

The Hard Rock/ Metal nominees for the seventh annual Independent Music Awards are: New Jersey's Ashes Are Nutritious ("Genocide"); Sweden's Electric Earth ("Words Unspoken"); Canada's Unexpect ("Another Dissonant Chord"); the U.K.'s Weapons ("Terrorist Youth"); and Canada's State of Shock ("Life, Love & Lies"). The winner will be announced in December. Past winners include God Forbid and Lacuna Coil. ... Goth-rockers the Gathering will release a double-DVD and CD called "A Noise Severe" on February 5. The recordings were made in Santiago, Chile, during the band's South American "Homelands" tour and will be the group's last releases to feature singer Anneke van Giersbergen, who left in June to focus on her new project, Agua de Annique. She has not yet been replaced. "There was an incredible noise the whole concert," drummer Hans Rutten said in a release. "The audience was superb. I think it's a very elegant way to end an era — with Anneke, that is — and it gives strength to us and what the future will bring. I think the recordings speak for themselves. It's unique. It's a statement. It's something to be proud of." ...

Veteran thrashers Testament will re-release two albums, 1997's Demonic and 1999's The Gathering, January 8. The discs were originally released on Spitfire but have since gone out of print. Recorded during the period when guitarist Alex Skolnick, bassist Greg Christian and drummer Louie Clemente were out of the band, Demonic features guitarist Glen Alvelais (Forbidden), bassist Derrek Ramirez (Dragonlord), and drummer Gene Hoglan (Strapping Young Lad, Death), while The Gathering features guitarist James Murphy (Death, Obituary), bassist Steve DiGiorgio (Death, Iced Earth and Sadus) and drummer Dave Lombardo (Slayer). Testament are currently working on their first album of original studio material since The Gathering. ...

Western Massachusetts band the Acacia Strain have added a second guitar player Jonathan Dennison (Unholy, Another Victim) in time for their upcoming tour with Despised Icon, Full Blown Chaos and the Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza. "I couldn't be happier with our decision," singer Vincent Bennett said in a statement. "Everyone is really excited to have him onboard, and we can't wait to see what he has to offer this band. We're wicked excited for this tour." The upcoming trek kicks off November 24 in Chicago and runs through December 22 in Worcester, Massachusetts. ... Hatebreed frontman Jamey Jasta has signed Florida sextet Catalepsy to his Stillborn label. The band recently finished recording its debut full-length CD, Iniquity, with producer Brian Elliot at Miami's Mana Recording Studios. The disc is scheduled for release on February 12. "It's great adding yet another young and hungry band to our new and improved roster," Jasta said in a statement. "Catalepsy crushes, and I'm glad to have them onboard. Plus they are from Florida — that state f---ing rules and has produced so many great extreme bands." ... In related news, Hatebreed will headline this year's Stillborn Fest, a 10-day tour that kicks off December 20 in Springfield, Virginia, and ends December 30 in Rochester, New York. At All Cost, God Forbid, Agnostic Front, Necro and new Stillborn signees Thy Will Be Done are also onboard, and additional to-be-announced bands will play select dates. ...

Stoner/psychedelic metalists Danava will release their second album, UnonoU, February 17. The disc will be the follow-up to the group's self-titled 2006 album. ... Progressive Canadian death-metal band Into Eternity will launch a North American tour with prog veterans Symphony X and Epica on April 4 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dates run through May 3 in West Springfield, Virginia. "The whole band is blown away to be touring with Symphony X," Into Eternity guitarist/singer Tim Roth said. "What a way to kick off the new album cycle. I look forward to seeing Epica as well. This is going to be a heavy tour with lots of high singing and shredding, and an amazing package for the fans to see." Into Eternity are currently working on their first concept album, which will be the follow-up to 2006's The Scattering of Ashes. ...

French electro death-metal band the CNK, will release its second album L'Hymne à la Joie, November 20. The album, which was produced by Stefan Bayle (Anorexia Nervosa), has been described by the band as "Rammstein and Alec Empire, sitting together on a heap of human corpses, rambling on the death of our modern world." What could be finer? ... French dark-metallers the Old Dead Tree have parted ways with Foued Moukid, who has stepped down from his drum-wielding duties after three years with the band. Moukid has decided to devote himself full-time to his other band, Arkan. "We have been working together for almost three years and we shared some unforgettable experiences together," the band said in a statement. "We will obviously remain friends and this 'breakup' has been on very good terms from both sides." The Old Dead Tree are now on the lookout for a new drummer, and those interested in trying out should e-mail the band at Info@TheOldDeadTree.com.

• Lamb of God
• Killswitch Engage
• The Acacia Strain

A Life Once Lost
Photo: Tim Harmon

During last summer's Ozzfest, a disturbing yet somewhat amusing tradition of sorts was birthed — one several second-stage acts ritualistically ended their days with.

After the shows, some bandmembers would plop themselves down in a long line of lawn chairs situated across the street from the parking lot of whatever venue they'd just collectively rattled. There, the musicians would sit and chug cans of lukewarm beer while brutally taunting the hundreds of kids — who'd just paid good money to roast the day away in the blistering sun and take in the metal — as they returned to their cars.

The bands dubbed it "Lurker's Row." Bob Meadows, frontman for Philadelphia metalcore extremists A Life Once Lost, witnessed these nightly roasts from time to time — but as a spectator, he said.

"It was kind of funny, but really, I was always like, 'Dang — I can't believe we're sitting here, just belittling all of these people who came out to a festival that we just played. This is how we're treating our friends and new guests — let's just torment them and make fun of them while they're leaving,' " he said. "Don't get me wrong — I will make fun of someone if I know them. But I think that kind of stuff is a little weird. I was made fun of in school a lot, so I try to stay away from making fun of people I don't know. I need positivity in my life."

"Lurker's Row" was just one of the ways the bands battled the boredom that comes with touring. Whether it returns in '07 remains to be seen; its revival rests solely with Hatebreed, the one act that'll be coming back for this summer's rendition.

While A Life Once Lost don't condone such tomfoolery, on their forthcoming LP — the head-crushing, incredibly abrasive, self-produced Iron Gag — Meadows does call out a few of the people who've pissed him off in recent years. But not by name, of course.

"There's just a lot of things I've wanted to say to a lot of people on this record," he explained. "Even within a song, there could be two or three people I'm talking about. It was just inspired by a lot of things I've wanted to say but haven't because I had to watch myself. There are so many ugly things going on in the music scene and life, and I was just like, 'F--- it, if I say something that's going to piss someone off, then it wasn't meant to be anyway. Let me just get this all off my chest.' So, this album's just really pissed, and it's just very vicious."

The songs on Iron Gag — like "Ill Will," "Firewater Joyride" and "Worship" — take jabs at womanizers, racists, addicts and those who Meadows believes aren't living up to their full potential. The singer said Iron Gag "sounds nothing like [2005's] Hunter," adding that, "the recording quality, to my ears, is just a million times better.

"The songs are just way more fierce," he continued. "There's just an element about it that Hunter didn't have, and I think maybe that was just us doing it ourselves. It was us learning from [Hunter producer and Anthrax guitarist] Rob Caggiano how to actually approach the songs and my working with [Lamb of God's] Randy Blythe on the vocal production, which taught me how to approach the songs well. And with all of that working together, we've definitely put out a record that's going to move a lot of heads — make people turn around and be like, 'Holy sh--.' It's a monster of a release."

The band spent four months — or more specifically, six hours a day, five days a week — working on Iron Gag, and Blythe's guidance helped Meadows turn in what he says is the best performance he was capable of.

"Randy came in, and I would say it was more like he helped me with certain accents on the words — certain ways of approaching my delivery," he said. "The lines and the phrasing, that was already done before we met up. To me, to come into the studio and to have him sitting in there and never hearing the songs before and being like, 'Dude, that's pretty sick. I never would have thought of that,' or, 'I like what you're doing there, but how about you bring that word up a little higher at the end, to give it that extra oomph.' "

The band also benefited from Blythe's past work with the producing likes of Machine and Devin Townsend. "You can just hear it coming out of him," Meadows said of the noticeable influence the producers have had on the Lamb of God frontman. "This guy's been wrapped up in it for years, and he really knows what he's talking about. I knew exactly how I wanted it to sound like, and how pissed I wanted it to be, but having someone like Randy come in only adds so much more intensity to it."

Look for Iron Gag to land in stores in August, Meadows said.

The rest of the week's metal news:

Necrophagist have a new drummer in Marco Minnemann. He replaces Hannes Grossmann, who left the band earlier this year. "The band is absolutely stoked to announce that Minnemann will be drumming on the new Necrophagist album, due in 2008," read a statement from the German technical death metallers. "We can't wait to work on arranging the new songs with such an incredibly talented, proficient and complete musician." ... Behemoth's forthcoming LP The Apostasy is in the bag. Recorded in the Polish band's hometown of Gdansk with frontman Nergal and longtime sound engineer Malta behind the boards, the disc is due in July. ... Swedish metal titans Soilwork continue to work on their next opus, which should surface later this year. Frontman Björn Strid is currently in Canada tracking vocals for the yet-untitled LP with producer Devin Townsend, who helmed 2002's Natural Born Chaos. The band does admit, though, that it's still got "a long way to go" before the album is completed. Look for the disc to include "Your Beloved Scapegoat," "Light Discovering Darkness" and "The Pittsburgh Syndrome." ...

Nile, who'll spend this summer playing Ozzfest's second stage, have entered the mixing phase for their forthcoming LP, Ithyphallic. "There are nine songs and one short acoustic piece," writes the band, "yet overall, a wide range of tempos, some doomy, exotic elements as well as some unbelievably fast and catchy metal." The record will boast "Language of the Shadows," "Even the Gods Must Die" and the brevity-challenged "Papyrii Containing the Spell to Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is in the Water." ... If you're craving something more extreme and violent than Sounds of the Underground or Ozzfest, you might wanna check out the Summer Slaughter tour. The gore-drenched traveling fest features Necrophagist, Decapitated, Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Beneath the Massacre, the Faceless, As Blood Runs Black, Arsis and Ion Dissonance. Dates run from June 1 in Clifton Park, New York, through July 8 in New York. Careful in the mosh pit: Spilled blood is way slippery. ... Thine Eyes Bleed, the Canadian thrash band featuring bassist Johnny Araya (brother of Slayer frontman Tom), are hard at work on their second full-length album. The band tracked the disc at Beach Road Studios in Goderich, Ontario, with producer Siegfried Meier and are getting ready to mix. "Things couldn't have been better this time around," singer Justin Wolfe said. "We were able to listen and create without the pressures of budget and time and it's really going to show." The yet-untitled album is scheduled for release this summer. ...

Austin, Texas, black-metal band Averse Sefira will remain on tour with 1349 through Monday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then they'll return home to continue working on their next album. While the release of the disc is still many months away, the band has already hired Jos. A. Smith — best known for painting the goat on Bathory's 1984 self-titled debut — to create the cover art. Earlier this month, Averse Sefira reissued their long-out-of-print debut album, Battle Clarion. ... Riverside, California, hardcore-metal band Suicide Silence have just finished recording their debut album, which was produced by John Travis (Static-X, Zebrahead) and mixed by Tue Madsen (Witchery, Kataklysm). The yet-untitled disc will be released this summer. "Working with John Travis was definitely an amazing experience," singer Mitch Lucker said. "He had us track everything live in order in order to capture the intensity we were aiming for." The disc will feature guest vocals by new Through the Eyes of the Dead singer Nate Johnson. Suicide Silence are on tour with Stick to Your Guns through Wednesday in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two days later they'll launch a tour with Bury Your Dead in Rochester, New York, with dates running through June 3 in Chicopee, Massachusetts. ...

Terror have been added to the Monsters of Mayhem II tour, which also features Hatebreed, God Forbid, Evergreen Terrace and the Acacia Strain. "Overall, this tour has a great lineup," Terror frontman Scott Vogel said. "For starters, we are very excited to be going out with Hatebreed again. They are influential and inspirational, and there is no other band we would rather tour with. And God Forbid is a band we always thought we should tour with, so we are glad to finally be going out with them." The tour launches May 18 in Rochester, New York, and runs through June 7 in Omaha, Nebraska. ... Lacuna Coil have posted the new video for "Within Me" on their MySpace page. The clip was shot in February in Italy. The band will remain on the road with the Jägermeister Music Tour, which also features Stone Sour and Shadows Fall, through May 4 in Des Moines. On May 7, Lacuna Coil will launch a headline tour in Louisville, Kentucky, with Within Temptation, In This Moment and Stolen Babies. Stolen Babies will support LC throughout, while the other bands will only play select shows — as will the Gathering and Kylesa. For the tour, Lacuna Coil are inviting fans to choose the set list — right here. Voting ends April 20. ...

Industrial-metal band Hardwire: The Industrial Hardcore Tech will write a song for an upcoming horror film tentatively titled "The 3rd Night on Winter Drive." Guitarist/singer Mike Marsh is currently scoring the film, which he also co-produced, co-wrote and acted in with costar Patti Tindall ("Machined"). "The film centers on a paranormal investigator who is hired to investigate a house where an upstanding religious family lived and was murdered," Marsh said. "It's like a cross between 'The Amityville Horror' and the television show 'Ghost Hunters.' " Postproduction is expected to be completed in May in time to submit the movie to film festivals. ... Testament singer Chuck Billy, ex-Exodus singer Steve "Zetro" Souza and Laaz Rockit's Willy Lange have re-formed their '80s Dublin, California, outfit Dublin Death Patrol. Over the past six months, the guys have been rearranging and restructuring old songs and working on new material. An album recorded with Vinnie Wojno is forthcoming. "This is what we have to give to the metal world," Souza said, "a kick-ass, straight-up, aggressive and in your f---ing face album of music by guys just from Dublin, California."

• A Life Once Lost
• Lamb of God
• Behemoth
• Soilwork
• The Acacia Strain