This was me on Christmas Eve. In a couple hours, this’ll most likely be me again.
Good afternoon, Dear Readers, and a Happy Fucking New Year to you all! I hope you enjoyed the collection of top-ten lists I published yesterday!
Before we finally put 2012 to bed, though, here’s a quick supplemental post to go along with my personal contribution to that conglomerate of lists. I’m calling it…
The Top Ten Shows I’ve Seen This Year:
A Supplemental Video Guide
28 December – Moths, Meth Quarry, and Cerebral Apophysis at Garfield Artworks
Despite my best attempts at searching, I was unable to find any video evidence of Cerebral Apophysis — either from this show or any other. However, I can present you with the following tastes of Meth Quarry from that Garfield Artworks show:
“Grimewave”
“Crash Anthem”
Special thanks to my wife Mrs. Valley of Steel for filming these songs and uploading them.The only live video of Moths I could find was this song that was recorded in spring 2011, but it’s enough to give you an idea of what we all were treated to last week:
24 November – Dethlehem at The Foundry (Lakewood OH)
I was glad to have this opportunity to see a local band in Ohio, since I happened to be in that area that particular weekend. But there wasn’t anything recorded at that show. Instead, I present you with Dethlehem performing “Sky Palace of the Dragonriders” at Mr. Smalls Theatre in early 2012.
They’ve changed bassists since this show, but this performance does feature their current vocalist Brutalitus the BloodBeard:
21 November – “Planksgiving” (with The Bloody Seamen, Mud City Manglers, and Supervoid) at Howler’s
Incredibly, you can watch a 3+ hour video of this ENTIRE show featuring all three bands! As you might imagine, given the size of the video, it’s presented in really low quality. But, here it is.
For those who don’t want to sit through that entire thing (or who perhaps want to see and/or hear the bands more clearly), here’s one of Supervoid‘s songs, “Braymerian (War Elephant),” in significantly better video and audio quality:
This video contains a fairly large chunk of the Mud City Manglers‘ set from that show:
And finally, here’s The Bloody Seamen performing “We Sail.” For some reason, the sound seems rather quiet on this video, but you can at least get enough of an idea how entertaining the band can be:
16 November – Biipiigwan, VⒺⒼA, and The Ravenna Arsenal at Bloomfield Bridge Tavern
I couldn’t find any videos from any of the bands at this show, but once again I did my best to give you a sample of the bands that were there.Taken during a show earlier this year, here’s The Ravenna Arsenal doing one of their lengthier songs, “The Desert Shows No Mercy”:
I was only able to find one video of VEGA performing. This includes several songs from their debut performance in July at the 31st Street Pub:
2 November – Fist Fight in the Parking Lot, ** ***, VⒺⒼA, Jericho Theory at Kopec’s
This was another show that wasn’t recorded by anybody (as far as I could tell), but I did come across this great video of Jericho Theory performing “Kids with Guns” at The Smiling Moose, shortly before I saw them. I remember this song from the Kopec’s show too, and it was a lot of fun:
And here’s a video of Fist Fight in the Parking Lot doing their song “S&M” at Mr. Smalls Theatre, sometime in 2011. Inexplicably, I had a tough time finding any more recent live performances than this…
13 October – 16, Tombs, Vulture, Molasses Barge at 31st Street Pub
In lieu of any video from this show (of which I could find none), please enjoy Vulture playing “This Beautiful Infection” at the 31st Street Pub — this is from a show in July, when they played with The Osedax.
And here is Molasses Barge at the Iron Atrocity benefit show at the Smiling Moose, way back in March 2012:
14 September – Solarburn CD Release Show at Howler’s
This was one show that I really expected to find some video from — and one that I really hoped to, because it’s really hard to fully appreciate this band if you haven’t had the chance to watch them play. However, the only video I could find of Solarburn at all was this one.Right at 2:38, you can hear an example of the band’s famous seamless transitions, as they kick into the opening track from their CD 13, “Titties on the Floor”:
7 September – Consumed With Hatred, Scattergun, and Flesh Addict at the Charleroi VFW
To give you an idea of the intensity of a Scattergun show, here they are at the Altar Bar a little over a year ago. This video includes their songs “They and Them Against We and Us” and “Mobilize” in addition to a raucous version of Body Count‘s “Cop Killer”:
I apologize for the low-quality of this video, but here’s Baltimore’s Consumed with Hatred playing their song “All Kings Fall” at a show in Frederick, Maryland:
And from the same show, here’s “Blood on the Ceiling”:
28 August – Biipiigwan, VⒺⒼA, and Solarburn at Mr. Roboto Project
Here I was fortunate enough to find some actual footage from the show I am telling you about! From their August appearance at Mr. Roboto Project, here’s Biipiigwan playing “Nibaak”:
And another video from that same show — which I was unable to identify, so it could possibly be a new song? (The band did say they had gotten some new stuff recorded recently which they plan to release in 2013!):
5 June – The Goddamn Gallows and Ernie and the Berts at Altar Bar
If I did this correctly, the following video should start out with Ernie and the Berts playing their song “Toy Box” from that Altar Bar show. (If you watch the video from the beginning, there’s also a seven+ minute interview with the band from before the show.):
Now, I couldn’t find any video of The Goddamn Gallows‘ performance that night, but I did find their rendition of Venom‘s “In League with Satan” from a different show in 2011. It was the drummer who did the vocals, and as I recall, they sounded a lot scarier (and more of a black metal style) on the day I saw them. But here you go:
And, just for fun (even though, as I mentioned before, I wasn’t able to stick around til the headliner’s set that night), here’s a video of The Real McKenzies (which, like the EATB one above, was filmed by AZ Productions at the Altar Bar, and also like the prior video, should start out with them playing — although you can also go back to the beginning to catch an interview).
Hope you enjoy these!
I’ll be back next year with some new content, stay tuned…!
Valley of Steel 