Stuck in yet another friggin’ hurricane…it’s the story of Trivium and the recording of their Roadrunner debut, Ascendancy. For those of you keeping score at home, it is now TWO hurricanes the band has gone through since hitting Morrisound studios in Florida earlier this month. Onward and upward…as told earlier, the drums are done, and they sound wonderful. “Crisp and heavy as hell,” tells the band. They are scheduled to start recording the guitars today, but only time will tell. Hurricane, power outages…you do the maths. “It’s all good,” tells frontman Matt Heafy, “spirits are still high. I mean, we still gotta deliver the most Metal Album we possibly can, don’t we???” Matt Heafy leaves us with a couple last pearls of wisdom on this day: “…goddamn – Ascendancy is going to be monumental. Devastating! ‘I swear by the blood I have shed’…”

“We’ve made it thru 10 years without a member of Slipknot missing a single show, but due to emergency medical reasons one of our brothers has been forced to return to Des Moines, IA. “Craig Jones #133, (#5), has been suffering incredible pain during the first week of our European tour and has been unable to eat or sleep properly. Therefore, a decision was made for him to return to the States for emergency dental surgery. “We made a band decision to continue the tour without Craig and to not let our European fans and friends down. The shows and fans, on this tour, have been some of the most insane of our career and we look forward to that each night. “We expect to have 133 rejoin the tour within the next 3-4 weeks, but until that time Sid Wilson will be handling the majority of his parts. “We’ll miss him on and off stage and wish him the best and a safe return.” -Slipknot

Cradle Of Filth’s 5K-rated new ‘Nymphetamine’ album hits your local store TODAY and you can pick it up for around 퉌£11.99 from HMV, Virgin, MVC, Music Zone and your local official ‘Roadrage’ store. Not only that, you can grab a copy of the latest ‘MTV2 í¢ä‰åäóì Headbanger’s Ball’ compilation double CD which is also out TODAY. 40 killer slices of Metal for around 퉌£12.99 from HMV, Virgin, MVC, Music Zone and your local official ‘Roadrage’ store too! What more do you want?! Oh yes… you can read some nice press reviews of both albums in their respective press sections…

Hey, please tell your friends and whoever that the website is back up at http://www.throwdownGo.com. Some dickface is going and getting himself sued for “cybersquatting” on our old address, so start peeping this one out for all your news and online merch needs. How wack is the word cybersquat? Sounds like it would be virtual shitting or something. Not nearly that cool, though, from what lawyers expalin to me. We’ll have the old address, xthrowdownx.com back soon enough and routed to the same page. You know you’re a real band when you own more than one web address, right? As I’m sure most of you know, we’re going out with Lamb of God, Fear Factory and Children of Bodom next month. You should probably go if you are in the US. Something for everyone there. We might have a tour pet by then and it might be a fuckin monitor lizard or something, so worst case scenario, if you don’t like the bands then you can come ride a giant fuckin reptile. Anyhow, Norma Jean tour is going awesome. Those dudes rule and have a killer 808 pad that makes at least 30 dudes with long hair shit their tight pants each night. For you Southern metal fans that never bothered to check NJ out before, do it cus there’s some serious riffs that rival the racism of Crowbar and Pantera. Get familiar. Hey this is our last hail mary effort…we need to get our fucking Canadian drummer a cell phone. He’s a neandrethal from a third world country that doesn’t have electricity let alone wireless technology, so he’s standing firm in his ways. Please, when you see him, can you roll on him and talk shit to him for being a pussy. Better yet, if you have an old cell phone through Verizon Wireless then please donate it to him. We get free mobile to mobile,and as much as we have to march around Super K or Walmart in the fitness section trying to find him, we’ll be needing those extra minutes. Thanks. That’s all for now. World Championship poker is on television right now and…well…priorities are priorities. Here are a few photos of our band buddies on ozzfest to enjoy til next time. I’ll let you know if anything life changing happens in the next few days. – Throwdown

With only 2 dates in the UK this visit, we know a buncha you are gonna be disappointed you couldn’t see Zao this time around. But for those of you within travelling distance of Manchester and London – rejoice! In fact, those of you near Manchester ought to be heading out to the bar pretty soon… for Zao play at the Star & Garter TONIGHT. Enjoy. Those of us down here in the South have to wait til tomorrow… we’ll see you at London’s Metro!

We hope you have got your tickets to see hot Trustkill band Most Precious Blood while they are in town! Just arriving in the UK this very evening from Europe, the tour kicks off immediately tonight in London. And as soon as the AC/DC album blaring in the office ends, we’ll be taking ourselves off down to the Underworld for a night of harrrrrdcoooree. See you there?

So, what rocks your speakers? Perhaps a little Fear Factory? Crank them up, and make sure you’ve got quicktime installed, it is time to watch the latest Fear Factory video for ‘Bite The Hand That Bleeds’, the main track from the upcoming horror flick Saw. Blood and gore abounds, you have been warned. And if you’ve not seen it yet, you can also watch the cool video for ‘Archetype’ too.

Murderdolls frontman Wednesday 13 just e-mailed to announce the newest addition to his solo band – former Amen guitarist Matt “Pig” Montgomery. Matt will be joining Wednesday and go on his upcoming Look What The Bats Dragged In European tour. Mr 13 said: “Pig is the perfect guy for this, we’re both horror movie junkies, and the whole reason we got into music in the first place was Alice Cooper… This tour is going to be so much more exciting now that he’s on board.” While Matt said: “Playing with Wednesday on this tour is like being in your favourite horror film for two and a half weeks… Monsters, blood, rock n’ roll, it’s right up my alley, needless to say I’m very excited.” Don’t forget, those tour dates are as follows: November 03 Cardiff, Barfly 04 Exeter, Cavern 05 London, Islington Academy 07 Manchester, Academy 3 08 Birmingham, Academy 2 09 Glasgow, King Tuts 10 Belfast, Lime Light 11 Dublin, Music Centre 13 Brighton, Concorde 2 17 Colchester, Arts Centre 18 Liverpool, Barfly

Here is the latest from Chimaria frontman Mark Hunter: “Well, well… so it is the end of the line for touring the Impossibility of Reason. You all know how Road Rage went for us, and if you don’t know we have spent the past 2.5 weeks in Japan and Australia with our friends in In Flames. The tour has been a huge success for us. Japan was an amazing country and we met some really cool fucking people. If you ever go to Japan you must try Kobe beef. It is hands down the best piece of steak I have had in my life…thanks RR and NB for hooking it up cause the food was really expensive! The concerts in Japan were really good. We didn’t expect much being our first time, but to our surprise we had a ton of fans there, and we can tell we made a lot more. That makes it all worth it. “Heading down under…we had heard that Australia has the best metal fans in the world…now, we come from America where we know how crazy people can get. Even though sometimes American audiences can be a bit spoiled, it’s our home turf and when someone says that another country is better…it’s hard for us to believe. Then we went to the UK where we feel like that is our 2nd home. The UK has some of the best crowds on the planet hands down, we didn’t think it could get much better then that…until we went down under. Now I’m not saying one is better then the other, but HOLY SHIT is the only way to describe an Australian crowd. Our first time there, and you would have sworn we were playing a home town show in Cleveland. Each show was amazing and we can’t wait to get back (which will be soon!!) You guys rule, we will come back and do a full Australian headline tour as soon as we can. “We want to thank every single state in America, and country that we have been to in the past year and a half. Again, the fans we have made, the fans that we played to, you make our lives worth a damn. Thanks to all of the bands we have toured with on this record, and the friends we have made for a lifetime.” To all, thanks again —- Mark PS: We are heading down to Mexico for the first time in a few weeks, just to break up the monotony of writing…from what I hear about Mexican crowds, this could rival America, Australia and the UK combined…hopefully it lives up to our expectations…and I’m sure it will!

Two more new Trustkill band videos being shot… Yes, we are talking of Hopesfall, the track in question being ‘Icarus’, and also of Walls Of Jericho, for the song ‘There’s No I In F*ck You’.