That’s what Seattle’s The Stranger would have you believe.  And hey, double-neck bass/guitar players are are pretty damn cool.  Boris’s forthcoming album "Smile", the follow up to 2006’s well-received "Pink," features more of the Japanese trio’s unique stoner rock wizardry.

Boris fans have several interesting options for preordering the album.  Preordering the album at Insound will get you an exclusive reprint of the "Statement" 7", while supplies last.  Amazon.com is offering the album with an exclusive ‘download card’ which can be redeemed for select mp3 tracks from several other Boris releases.  And of course, you can order it through Southern Lord along with an "Smile" t-shirt or sweatshirt.

There’s also a video for the song ‘Statement’ from "Smile" up on YouTube, and you can stream the song on Boris’s MySpace page.  The album will be released April 29th on Southern Lord Records.

If the June release date for Opeth’s "Watershed" seems a little far away, eager fans can get a taste of the album on April 22nd, when the "Porcelain Heart" single will be released.  ‘Porcelain Heart will be the 5th song on the new album, and clocks in at around 8 minutes.  It will be available for download from Amazon MP3 as well as in stores. 

Opeth has also recently completed work on a music video to go with the song.  The video was filmed in a Swedish castle and will have a very dark, gothic look and feel to it.  Several screenshots are currently posted at Opeth.com.

Brooklyn experimental metalcore band Candiria is in sort of a ‘zombie’ state nowadays - they haven’t really broken up, but they aren’t really an active band either, being unable to tour because of drummer Kenneth Schalk’s departure.  Then there’s the whole fiasco of the band being unable to release their latest completed album, "Kiss The Lie," because the record label feels a release without a touring band would be too risky. 

So fans are left waiting to see if Candiria’s latest album will ever be released.  Fortunately this year, the band is doing its best to keep us busy while we wait.  They’ve announced plans to release a remix album later this year, along with a rarities album containing songs from the band members’ personal collections and side projects.  The remix album has an impressive list of contributors so far: The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dalek, Indecision, Kayo Dot, Navicon Torture Technologies, Kevin Hufnagel of Dysrhythmia, and several others.

Several members of the band are also active in various side projects that are worth checking out.  As I’ve mentioned before, guitarist John LaMacchia’s band Spylacopa is planning to release its debut EP later this year.  Vocalist Carley Coma and Schalk have also formed an alternative rock band called Hope Kills Fear, and have posted a few songs on the Hope Kills Fear MySpace page.

San Francisco atmospheric black metal act Lurker of Chalice is planning a reissue of its highly sought-after debut album through Southern Lord Records.  "Lurker of Chalice" was originally an extremely limited-edition, hand-numbered release, and has long been sold out.  The reissue will come as a digipak and will feature a bonus track previously found only on the vinyl edition.  The release date for "Lurker of Chalice" is mid-april, and preorders are available through Amazon and Omega Mailorder.

Lurker of Chalice is also planning a new album, presumably later this year, according to Battle Kommand Records.  The new album will be titled "Perverse Calculus, and the release will be split between Battle Kommand and Ajna.  

For those who don’t know, Lurker of Chalice is the one-man project of Leviathan mastermind Wrest, and takes Leviathan’s black metal sound to much further depths of darkness and malevolence.  The music resembles acts like Fields Of The Nephilim (Elizium era) and Bauhaus just as much as it does any of the current depressive/ambient black metal acts.  Leviathan recently released new album "Massive Conspiracy Against All Life" earlier this year.

Los Angeles’s Red Sparowes is currently taking a break from recording to play a few shows along the West Coast, supported by Russian Circles.  Both bands have albums due out later this year, and are taking the opportunity to debut several new songs for lucky fans. 

Red Sparowes’s still-untitled album apparently will veer away from the bleak, emotionally-heavy themes of than 2006’s "Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun," and back towards the lighter territory of their debut, "At The Soundless Dawn."  Though the band’s typical ultra-long song titles haven’t yet been made public for the new album, imagery on the band’s video projection during the show featured star-filled skies and undulating jellyfish.  Contrast this with the fiery explosions and political imagery displayed during songs from "Every Red Heart…" and you get some idea of where the new album may be headed.  The typical epic Red Sparowes sound is of course still present, with intricate guitar arrangements forming layers of melody and atmosphere, but once again the band appears to be taking their sound in a new direction.  If the early versions are any indication, the new material will be at least as powerful and captivating as anything from the last two albums.

Russian Circles have only one album to draw from, so their set naturally contained even more new material than that of Red Sparowes.  "Stations" will come out May 6th, and judging from the songs they performed live, the level of aggression in the songs is a notch above the sound on 2006’s "Enter."  You can get a taste of the new album via the track ‘Harper Lewis,’ currently available on Russian Circles’s MySpace page. 

Fans of the new wave of post-rock/metal/sludge bands (Neurosis, ISIS, Pelican, Rosetta, etc.) will should definitely plan to catch these guys on tour if possible.  Russian Circles puts on a flawless and surprisingly heavy show, especially considering that they play as a 3-piece live.  Red Sparows features a huge video projection to accompany their songs, Neurosis-style (guitarist Josh Graham is the guy who does Neurosis’s visuals, go figure).  Remaining dates are:

3/26: San Francisco @ Bottom of the Hill
3/27: Los Angeles @ Echoplex
3/28: San Diego @ Casbah
3/29: Phoenix @ the Brickhouse 

Last year’s crop of metal albums certainly showed off the genre’s diversity, with newcomers like Alcest, Rwake, Grayceon, Begraven and Baroness filling out yearly top album charts alongside heavyweights such as Pelican, Nile, The Red Chord, Neurosis and The Dillinger Escape Plan.  One thing 2007 didn’t give us much of is that which metal is perhaps most famous for: uncompromisingly brutal, nihilistic slabs of violent music.  For that we look to 2008, when many of the genre’s most talented death metal bands are gearing up to unleash their latest blocks of audio havoc onto the public.

This year’s list of releases is headed by two of brutal death metal’s best known bands, New York’s Suffocation and Montreal’s Cryptopsy.  Suffocation’s next offering is tentatively titled "Blood Oath", and Cryptopsy’s "The Unspoken King" will be their first release to feature new vocalist Matt McGachy and keyboardist Maggie Durand. 

Many of death metal’s veteran acts are somehow still cranking out quality music in 2008.  Most notably, Poland’s Vader is planning to release "XXV" to commemorate their 25 years in the business, which means that they started making music while many of their fans were still mastering breathing.  Deicide’s "Till Death Do Us Part", Sinister’s "The Silent Howling", and Dismember’s "Dismember" will all be released soon, and should satisfy fans’ nostalgia for the genre’s glory days of the early 90’s. 

Great death metal releases this year also include Hate Eternal’s "Fury And Flames" and Decrepit Birth’s "Diminishing Between Worlds," which are both already in stores.  The next few months will bring albums from Emeth, Origin (talk about bad-ass cover art) and Bloodbath.  Canada’s vibrant death metal scene will also be pumping out new albums from Kataklysm, Neuraxis and Augury. 

So basically, if you’re tired of all this crap about sludge metal, progressiveness, and whatever else, and you just want some brutal-ass metal, you’re going to have a very good year.

German label Northern Silence will be releasing the CD version of Angmar and Alcest’s split CD, "Aux Funérailles Du Monde / Tristesse Hivernale."  Northern Silence has samples from both artists’ contributions, and if the Alcest sample is any indication, "Tristesse Hivernale" is a huge leap in the black metal direction compared to the sound on the band’s shoegaze-metal masterpiece "Souvenirs d’Un Autre Monde." 

Due to an unfortunate mixup between Northern Silence, Alcest mainman Neige and Alcest’s label Prophecy Productions, the album’s production run had to be reduced from the planned 3000 copies to the current number of 500.  This of course means that you’d better grab these while you can - I’d bet that Aquarius Records will get their hands on a few, but copies will be disappearing pretty fast.  You can preorder the album directly through Northern Silence, which might be the best way to guarantee yourself a copy.

Justin Broadrick keeps himself busy enough releasing music and touring as Jesu, it’s hard to believe he has time for anything else.  Yet Broadrick has somehow found time to form a new project with Jarboe, with the duo releasing their debut EP "J2" in mid-March.  The music on "J2" for the most part bears no resemblance to the rest of Broadrick’s work with Jesu and Godflesh, abandoning any heaviness and ambience for Jarboe’s worldly vocals.  In certain passages one can almost hear a trace of Jesu’s sound in the background, except with Broadrick’s vocals replaced by the floating tones of Jarboe’s voice.  

Fans of Jesu’s shoegaze-influenced ambient metal might not take to "J2"’s experimental nature, but they can always turn to Final, Broadrick’s experimental ambient project.  2006’s double-CD release "Final 3" sounds very much like Jesu with the vocals removed: blissful ambience with subtle melodies worked in, sluggish and simple yet emotional and expressive.  "Final 3" and the previous two albums are available through Amazon.com, as well as Broadrick’s own Avalanche Inc store.

According to Avalanche, Final will also be releasing a limited-edition picture disc vinyl LP titled "Afar" this year.  You can keep up with the latest news on all things Broadrick-related through the Justin K Broadrick news blog. 

Underground metal heavyweights Opeth and Meshuggah are both set to release new studio albums in the coming months.  Meshuggah’s "ObZen," due March 11th, and Opeth’s "Watershed," due June 3rd, are two of this year’s most highly-anticipated metal releases.

Members of Meshuggah have stated that the music on "ObZen" will bear a strong resemblance to the band’s older, thrashier material, while also incorporating more aggression and anger than the last few releases.  It’s hard to argue with this assessment after hearing the preview track ‘Bleed,’ which is currently streamable on Meshuggah’s MySpace page.  "ObZen" is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.com. 

"Watershed" will be Opeth’s 9th studio album.  The release is still a few months away, but the album is already drawing several positive reviews (hey it’s Opeth, what did you expect?).  The cover art (by Travis Smith as usual) can now be seen here. 

For more upcoming metal albums, check out Musical Warfare’s 2008 Upcoming Albums List, a comprehensive listing of 2008’s notable upcoming metal releases. 

Norwegian experimental/ambient artist Elegi has completed production of his second album, though no release date has yet been set.  The follow up his haunting 2007 debut "Sistereis," the new album apparently finds mainman Tommy Jansen further developing his sound, and will incorporate several session musicians, including the use of a musical saw.  Nevertheless, Jansen states that the album with keep the "dark, scary and melancholic Elegi- sound intact."

Elegi’s first album was released on Svarte Greiner frontman Erik Skodvin’s label, Miasmah, where its sound fits in perfectly - "Sistereis" is dominated by brooding, melancholic piano melodies accompanied by subtle, creepy noises and sounds lurking below the surface.  Not unlike Svarte Greiner’s ‘acoustic doom,’ Elegi creates music that is soft and beautiful, but full of a sense of foreboding just as potent as anything that bands like Sunn O))) have put out.

Check Elegi’s MySpace page for news about the new album.