This just showed up in my inbox:

Ready to carve their turkeys, watch the big game, and celebrate the season, North American Century Media artists have checked in with what they are doing for this week’s holiday:

IMPALED’s Ross Sewage reminded us of heritage. “This Thanksgiving, I’m going to sneak into unwary white people’s houses and scalp them in honor of my ancestors. I will take their children and split their torsos so I can bathe in their blood. I will do the dance of vengeance in the name of “The Great One” and I will curse and spit upon the memory of Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and Andrew Jackson. Then… I’ll probably meet up with my family and have a Tofurkey.”

INCANTATION’s mainman John McEntee says he is “looking forward to eating my mother in-laws Thanksgiving turkey and mashed potatoes. It’s way better then being on tour and eating Taco Bell and Jack In The Box. I’m also looking forward to hanging out with my long time friend Dieter. He is selling merch for the Aerosmith tour and they have the day off for Thanksgiving. He’ll be passing by my place on his way to their next show in Pittsburgh, so to see him will be way cool.”

NEVERMORE’s Jim Sheppard says he is, “looking forward to sitting on my couch, watching football, and ignoring my family. Hot dogs and potato chips!” Having just returned home after six months of touring, the band deserves a day off in front of the TV. Jim continues, “Warrel usually heads over to Jeff’s to stitch up a turkey. He’s a surgeon, stuffs it full of garlic and butter, it ends up amazing.”

Whatever your tradition is, we at Century Media wish you and your family a Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy T-Day from beMETAL as well!

P.S. - It’s been a slow metal news week, sorry I haven’t been posting much.

From DarkTranquillity.com:

“As many of you know, I’m not only a criminally overrated guitarist but also a freelance graphic designer, having created artwork for bands like In flames, Arch enemy, Sentenced and so forth. During the years I’ve recieved lots of requests for some sort of book with my work, and now the time has come.

Gadus morhua features 132 pages of b/w drawings created between 1993 and 2005.

These days, when everyone and his dog can toy around in Photoshop and create "artwork" by blending a few layers, it feels nice to release a collection of old fashioned pencil drawings, created directly in my sketchbook without any preparational work. Just spontaneous ink-on-paper.

Those who are interested can head over to cabinfevermedia.com for some previews as well as video clips that show the typical development process of a drawing. It usually starts with an eye…“

I’ve always been a fan of Niklas’ artwork. I think I’ll have to check this out.

From Blabbermouth.net:

Fractured Transmitter Records will be issuing former CARCASS bassist/vocalist Jeff Walker’s solo album consisting exclusively of country and blues covers from artists including SKEETER DAVIS, HANK WILLIAMS, JOHNNY CASH, CONNIE SMITH, and JOHN DENVER — albeit with a metallic spin. The CD, entitled “Welcome to Carcass Cuntry”, is tentatively scheduled for release in February/March 2006.

“What I’m doing is kinda left of center to some extent,” Walker told Decibel magazine late last year. “It’s really not that original of an idea when you consider that [SOCIAL DISTORTION frontman] Mike Ness has already done a country-hybrid album. But I don’t think anyone from a background like mine has done it, and done it with a bit of respect — not turning it into a piss take.”

This is just wrong on so many levels.

From The Onion:

In an emergency session Tuesday, members of the Supreme Metal Council strongly condemned the increasing use of the metal hand sign in lay society, claiming that its meaning has become perverted by overuse.

…

“I remember a time not long ago when the Devil Horns were reserved for only the most righteous of person, deed, or riff,” Grand Elder Lemmy Kilmister said. “To see someone throwing the horns to his mate at the launderette because the clothes dryer came to a full stop just as he finished reading his copy of Circus… It breaks my heart.”

Read the full report here.

It’s good to see a reputable site like The Onion taking on a serious problem in metal today.

From Metalinjection.net:

This is no joke, it’s very serious. Last night, while coming home from the Suffocation/Cryptopsy show, Frank got robbed of his bookbag which had our camera, wireless mic equipment and tapes featuring an entire Red Chord Halloween show, and interviews with Decapitated and Despised Icon…and now all of that is gone. The worst thing about this is we haven’t fully paid for the camera or the mic equipment yet.

As of right now, METAL Injection has absolutely NO equipment to record any future shows or do any interviews. To put it simply…we are quite FUCKED!

I’d like to clear something up before going any further…METAL Injection is not backed by some big corporation feeding us money to do this show, METAL Injection is just a few kids from Brooklyn who wanted to expose the scene better and took action with money out of our own pockets.

Right now, we are at least $2000 in the hole…money which we DO NOT HAVE!

This is seriously the time, when we need you fans the most. If ever you wondered how you could give back to METAL Injection, this is your time to shine. We are completely desperate right now, and need to get equipment back fast to produce stuff for next season.

Please, take a minute of your time and click on the PayPal button below and donate ANYTHING you can. A dollar, a few cents, we don’t care…right now, we can use all the help we can get.

Ultimately, this show and this site is for the fans, and everything we do on the site is for you, and right now we could really use each and every one of your help…

Otherwise, we might have to close down the site.

Needless to say, this fucking sucks.

Having helped them start METAL Injection Guerilla Radio I’ve gotten to know some of the MI crew pretty well, and it pisses me off that something like this would happen to them.

So if you can spare it (you know you can), please click the paypal link on their site and send a few dollars their way.

Hopefully everything works out.

From Disillusion.de:

The good

Since February, Disillusion are working on the second full-length record at our Salvation Recording studio in Leipzig and are now very close to finishing the song-writing process. As already presumed months ago: the new record will not be a follow-up to BACK TO TIMES OF SPLENDOR - that is for sure. No fields but motorways, where once were woods now concrete reigns. What then was orange is set ablaze.

For all that, the new songs are much more Disillusion than ever before.

Alright! New Disillusion is coming!!

The bad

The band is also looking forward to soon leaving BTTOS behind, most of all live. Despite the constant attempts to shrink the monolithic material to a live-3-piece, it simply will not get any better.

WHAAAT!! Does this mean I’ll never get to hear anything from Back to Times of Splendor live?! Not that I had high hopes of them touring the states any time soon, but this sucks! BTTOS was my favorite album from last year!

From Garage Radio:

Are you going back into the studio with more new stuff?

[Joey] There’s a good chance for things to happen. I think as we go things get closer to more developments, but we’ve been pretty busy since April. We’ve been cracking ever since. Can’t go wrong there and everything we do gets better. I think everybody gets more optimistic. I guess you have to feel it out. As far as doing a record, I think it’d be a nice thing to do, but you have to get in a room. You have to decide to do something like that and you have to spend some time. So for us to do that … we haven’t gotten that far. We’ve been so busy that even if we wanted to write like this second we wouldn’t, because nobody would have the time or even the mindset to do it.

I was psyched to see them get the old lineup back together to tour, but a new album too? Sweet!

What can I say about Arsis that hasn’t been said already? Probably nothing. This band is outstanding beyond description.

Sure, it’s just a 3 song EP (one of which is almost 13 minutes long), but as I always say, quite often less is more in metal these days.

If ever you were a fan of Carcass, At The Gates, Arch Enemy (the list goes on…), it would be criminal for you to not check out this band.

For a more detailed review of this EP, go here. It can be had for a mere $8 through Willowtip Records’ site.

P.S.: I’ve wanted to start “mini reviews” like this for a while, so I think I’ll do these “Mandatory METAL” posts pretty often.

[audio:http://libsyn.com/media/bemetal/tel_060101.mp3]

By now I’m sure most people have heard that Tarja Turunen, the lead singer of Nightwish, has been fired by the rest of the band.

Here is an excerpt from the open letter that was released:

“…we cannot go on with you and Marcelo any longer. During the last year something sad happened, which I`ve been going over in my head every single day, morning and night. Your attitude and behavior don`t go with Nightwish anymore.

There are characteristics I would never have believed to see in my old dear friend. People who don`t talk with each other for a year do not belong in the same band.”

To which Tarja responded:

“…they gave me a letter and asked me to read it the following day. The same letter that is now public.

I read it and was shocked.

I didn’t know what to say and still at the moment that I am writing these lines, I don’t.

I sense great anger in that letter and I continue to have very confused feelings about it, but I don’t want to reply to this anger with an even greater anger. Private matters should never be taken to the public.”

You can read follow-ups from here and here.

Nightwish has been one of my favorite bands ever since their Wishmaster album, so I was pretty shocked when I heard about this. I think they’ll have a hard time finding another lead singer who can compare to Tarja, her voice is incredible.

Your thoughts?