Killer Lyrics: I will dry my salt-water eyes / Swimming deeper once again / Cutting my heart line / Cutting my heart line

Landmine Marathon, one of Phoenix, Ariz.'s finest underground death-thrash metal outfits, just released their second album for Prosthetic Records, 'Sovereign Descent'. 'Exist' is the only track from this release that the band revealed on their Myspace page, and the lyrics above are the last few lines of the song.

The songs utilizes the age-old metaphor of nautical travel as a model of human life and relationships. "'Exist' is about a personal relationship I had where I felt helpless," vocalist Grace Perry -- who also moonlights as a librarian -- told Noisecreep. "No matter what I did and how hard I tried it only ended in a cluster f--k of bulls--t."

The members of Janus wear red and black, militaristic uniforms in their video for 'Eyesore' and when they perform on tour. But they have to be careful, as these custom pieces are one of a kind. Literally.

"They came out of a concept that started with the record," vocalist David Scotney told Noisecreep. "We wanted the artwork to be different and not look like four guys in black t-shirts. I presented the band with a1920s Russian constructivists war poster vibe that was really graphic and bold. They loved it. It made a concise statement. I love the idea, too, since the record is personal in moments to me, lyrically. The artwork and the uniforms are a nice contrast to that, those more personal lyrics." The video for 'Eyesore' follows along with the semi-political style of their stage attire.

"Here's the part where we ruin the set with fifteen minutes of stuff you've never heard before," Harvey Milk bassist Stephen Tanner drawled as he fiddled with the thick strings of his battered instrument before tearing into a handful of bottom-heavy new basslines. The long-running, long-suffering scuzz rock trio's upcoming LP, 'A Small Turn of Human Kindness,' will be out on Hydra Head on May 18, as frontman Creston told Noisecreep earlier this month.

On March 7, Stephen and his brothers in arms Creston Spiers and Kyle Spence were joined in one of Baltimore's less terrifying -- but still pretty damn terrifying -- neighborhoods by Chicago's psychedelic sludge noiseniks the Atlas Moth and Kansas City's metalcore institutions Coalesce at the Ottobar, a rock 'n' roll club with an impressive history and even more impressive array of band stickers plastered across its weary walls.

Power metal is a polarizing genre. People love it or hate it, as it borders on self-parody, simply due to the style's bombast and large, sweeping, epic nature. Sweden's Hammerfall make music that can be categorized as power metal -- but they have serious beef with the phrase.

"I've never seen Hammerfall as anything other than a heavy metal band," guitarist Oscar Dronjak told Noisecreep. "When we began playing this music, heavy metal was an outcast style. If you played heavy metal, you were a dork. And we suffered through that phase for a bit, but like Manowar, we held our heads high and said, 'F--- off.'"

Five months after their daughter Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington disappeared from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville, Va., Gil and Dan Harrington met with reporters outside the concert venue where she was last seen, to speak with the media about the ongoing investigation into what happened to Morgan and who is responsible for her grisly death. Morgan's body was discovered back in January in a remote hayfield ten miles south of where the concert was staged.

According to reports, when Morgan's remains were found, it was clear her bones had been shattered and broken. "This Charlottesville man hurt Morgan Harrington enough to break her bones before he murdered her. I cannot get the image of Morgan's shattered bones out of my mind, nor the jagged feel of the fractures on my fingers," said Gil, her mother. The local medical examiner's office has ruled Morgan's death a homicide, but it will still be several months before an official cause of death is determined. Police still have no suspects.

On the first night of Austin's annual SXSW, March 17, metal reigned supreme, with Dillinger Escape Plan slaughtering a crowd at Emo's, while Prosthetic Records held court downstairs at the Mohawk, as Action! PR occupied the outside upper deck. It was a battle of deafening decibels -- and was sponsored by Decibel Magazine -- that nearly reduced the Mohawk to a pile of rubble and smoldering ash. While Withered slayed downstairs and inside, Gates of Slumber, featuring ex-members of Burn It Down, spread the doom outside and upstairs!

Atlanta's Zoroaster also gave off an amp buzz, better than any libation could ever provide and Landmine Marathon's Grace Perry pretty much ripped my face off, playing and screaming like a woman possessed by something demonic.

Despite its inescapable chorus and slick guitar riff, 'Monster,' the second single off Memphis veterans Skillet's eighth album, 'Awake,' was never expected to be a hit song by singer/bassist John Cooper. "We've been a band for a long time and had other singles that I thought were going to be big," Cooper tells Noisecreep. "['Monster'] was radio-friendly, but I wasn't sure. Now, people always tell me that they first heard about us through hearing 'Monster' on a ringtone."

The success of 'Monster,' which cracked the Top 5 of the Mainstream Rock Songs chart, helped push 'Awake' to a No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 upon its release last September. The song has garnered over three million plays on the band's MySpace page, and has appeared in the 'WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010' video game as well as on MTV's 'Bully Beatdown.'