Metal News.

Local metal/hardcore band Cry Murder are currently looking for a new drummer and vocalist. With influences that include Fear Factory, Chimaira, Arch Enemy and Darkest Hour, and plans to record their debut full-length early next year, they're after two committed members to join them in what they say will be a busy year ahead. Interested parties should contact them care of cry_murder@hotmail.com or www.myspace.com/crymurder

On Mon 24 Sep, Melbourne's No Escape Records will re-release Captain Cleanoff's 2002 self-titled album. Some bonus material will be included with the re-release, including songs from split 7"s the band did with Open Wound and Drunkard.

On Sat 29 Sep, local Gothic/metal band Art In Exile will be doing their first show in over six months at new music venue The Northern Sound System (Elizabeth). The all-ages show will be the group's first with new bass player Leni Benton, and also feature Octanic, Desmodus and The Vampire Project.

First for some good news: next February, Iron Maiden will be doing their first tour of Australia since 1992. Now for some bad news: that tour won't include Adelaide, which was missed the last time as well. A local metalhead by the name of Stephen Lord is rightly pissed about this, and has started up an online petition to try and get the Irons to come here as well; to add your name, go to www.petitiononline.com/maidenSA/petition.html

In another bit of metal-related cheesiness from the country that brought you Vince Neil's 'Motley Cruise', Poison's Bret Michaels has apparently been enjoying quite a bit of success with his latest creative venture, a reality TV dating show entitled 'Rock Of Love With Bret Michaels'. The ten-part series sees twenty women vying for the affections of the heavy metal has-been, who puts them through a series of "outrageous challenges" to see if they can handle the frenetic pace of his rock star lifestyle. Apparently, "those who can't hang like true backstage VIPs [are] escorted out in bona fide rock star fashion." Sounds ominous.

Are we witnessing the beginning of another feud in the world of metal? Having just embarked upon a North American tour, a melodic thrash band from Florida called The Absence have offered people who turn up to their shows a "free metal upgrade" - anyone who rocks up with a Trivium T-shirt can exchange it free of charge for an Absence one. Why the band have chosen to target Trivium with this provocative gesture is unclear; one also wonders what they intend to do with all the T-shirts they collect.

Lack of evidence has resulted in the dropping of an assault charge against Oli Sykes, the twenty year-old front-man of English "deathcore" band Bring Me The Horizon. Sykes was alleged to have urinated on a woman who boarded the band's tour bus after a show and refused to have sex with him; the woman and a friend were then ejected from the vehicle, whereupon an unidentified band member lobbed an empty beer bottle out the window, hitting the victim in the head.

Iraq's only heavy metal band, Acrassicauda, have been made the subject of a film called 'Heavy Metal In Baghdad', which has been shown at this year's Toronto Film Festival. Unfortunately, although invited to the film festival, the stars of the movie were unable to attend as some idiot from Canadian Customs decided they posed a security threat, and denied them entry to the country. In further unhappy news for the group, the government of the country where they're now residing, Syria, has threatened to send them back to Iraq, where many of the Islamic loonies want them dead. For more information on the film (which Spike Jonze helped produce), go to www.heavymetalinbaghdad.com

Online television station VBS TV has produced an interesting little documentary entitled 'True Norwegian Black Metal', which focuses on Gorgoroth front-man Gaahl, who appears to be one of the most feared and reviled individuals in Norway right now. To check it out, go to www.vbs.tv

And the band breakups keep on coming! This time, Chicago's Usurper, who formed in 1993, have decided to call it quits. Guitarist and founder Rick Scythe made the pivotal decision to dissolve the band; among the reasons he cited for doing so were poor album sales (the group's most recent release, 2005's 'Cryptobeast' was their worst-ever seller), a failure to exploit new Internet-based technologies in distributing their music, and general apathy on the part of his bandmates. He's since decided to sink all of his energies into a new musical endeavour called Nightshade.

Machine Head aren't harbouring particularly warm feelings towards the Walt Disney Company right now, having had a couple of shows that were to be held on Disney property (in both Anaheim and Orlando) cancelled at the last minute as a result of pressure from the corporation, which cited "violent imagery, undesirable fans and inflammatory lyrics" as reasons they didn't want the shows going ahead. Thankfully for fans, alternative venues were quickly found for each show, although in the case of the Anaheim one, the new venue would prove to be more than a hundred kilometres from the original one.

A diverse assortment of outfits from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are the focus of this column's obscure band plug. Firstly, from Gevgelija (a city on the country's border with Greece) comes Arkonian, a one-man folk black metal project with some interesting material up at www.myspace.com/arkonianwar A very different beast is the succinctly-titled Smut, a metalcore band from the capital, Skopje - to give them a listen go to www.myspace.com/smutmkhc Finally, from nearby Tetovo comes Warnament, a thrash metal group who despite forming only this year, already have a demo out, four tracks from which are posted up at www.myspace.com/warnament

James Brazel (jbr09171@bigpond.net.au)