Hello out there! It’s been quite a wet and wild week, but the end is finally in sight!
It’s Friday, and the weekend is nearly here — which of course brings with it plenty of opportunities to get out there and check out some shows, right? Of course it does.
And I’ve got some pretty good shit to share with you, happening tonight, right here in Pittsburgh! You might want to hold onto your hat…
Hey, good afternoon! Hope everything’s going well for you, dear readers. Here, it’s still pretty damn dreary and wet, but it looks a little bit less black outside than it has for the past few days — seems like that bitch Sandy might finally be leaving us alone.
Anyway, that’s all pretty much off-topic from what I wanted to tell you about this afternoon, which is how you can get your hands on some FREE music by a group of guys from my local area (not exactly the same part of town as me, but they’re from a little further downriver along the same valley that this website was named after) — plus how you can get a chance to see them play live (if you live in the midwestern or eastern United States, that is)!
Punks are getting arrested in Indonesia, being forced to shave their heads, being forced to pray, and having their clothes burned.
That’s the story behind Punk Aid and Aceh Calling, the massive (72 bands!) benefit compilation that’s on-sale now to support the underground punk scene in Indonesia.
The compilation was originally released in March 2012 as a digital download, and you can still grab a copy of this titanic collection from Bandcamp for just six bucks. But since that time, enough money has been raised to have CDs made, as well.
This is a three-disc set, and there were only 200 copies produced — at least half of which will stay inside Indonesia for all the punk kids there who may not be able to download the MP3 version. But there are a handful of them available for sale to the rest of the world, so if you want to help out a struggling pocket of the worldwide punk community AND get some new CDs packed full of great music in the process, you should hurry up and take advantage of this!
Movement Records in Jakarta is receiving all of the profits from the album sales, so they can distribute the money to those who need it locally. The bands included on the compilation will receive no money, and neither will the folks who brought it together or those who are selling it. “This is being done for one reason — it’s the fucking right thing to do,” says Punk Aid organizer Michael “Mike Virus” Rothstein.
And here’s an update regarding the upcoming Saille album…
I just told you two weeks ago that the Belgian black metal band had pretty much wrapped up working on their second album — the follow-up to 2011’s Irreversible Decay, but now I have several more tidbits of information to disseminate to you lucky bastards!
First of all, I mentioned before that the artwork for the album’s cover was being designed by Polish landscape artist Michal Karcz. Well, that’s been completed and is now ready to be revealed to you — in fact, it’s that lovely green mountain fortress up at the top of this page.
But that’s not all…. Continue reading
Hey there, party people! You might have noticed that I just wrote about these guys a little over a week ago, when I learned that they had a new three-track EP ready to be released at the beginning of next month. At that time, I told you that Axis was being released through Black Iron Records as a digital download on Bandcamp, on the first of November — which is just two more days away, so hopefully you’re as excited as I am about that!
But since that post, I learned even better news, with the promise of even more new MAKE material coming our way in the not-too-distant future!
Continue reading
Hello there, folks! In case you can’t read a calendar (or you just woke up from a coma or something), it’s Monday again. So that means back to work, or school, or whatever the hell you do all day. Generally this isn’t really a good thing. But, once you see what I have to share with you, maybe you won’t mind as much…
See, I didn’t really get around to doing a lot of writing over the past week, besides a couple updates about shows happening in the Pittsburgh area over the weekend — if you hadn’t noticed, my last article before those was on Tuesday, when the Doommantia Vol. 1 benefit compilation for Ed Barnard was released.
Since then, I’ve bought myself a copy and downloaded it, and believe me it’s well worth at least the minimum purchase price — which, once again, goes towards helping out a friend in need. If you missed the news last week (or if you saw it and said you’d come back to it later and then forgot about it) you can check iit out here.
Anyway, I was saying I hadn’t really written much since then. That’s mostly due to the fact that things were so busy at work last week. But don’t worry, I spent tons of time listening to music and finding some good quality stuff to pass along to you!
Besides the Doommantia compilation, I’ve run across several more good ones recently, many of which can be downloaded for FREE, and I’d like to tell you about those today!
Hey folks. We’ve already talked about Ed Barnard, who operates the Doommantia website, but in case you’ve forgotten, this is the guy who has dealt with being bankrupted by astronomical medical bills, eventually resulting in being evicted from his home. More information on the situation is available elsewhere, if you care to look.
Anyway, it’s a pretty terrible story, but the brotherhood (and sisterhood — or, let’s just say, siblinghood) of Doom Metal has been quick to respond. The Doommantia website itself has been collecting funds via a Paypal button; earlier this month, Maryland-based War Injun put together a benefit concert.
And now, an enormous (39 tracks! Over four hours long!) compilation of songs from all kinds of amazing bands has been put together by members of South Carolina’s Compel. Downloads are available for purchase from Bandcamp; the minimum price is only seven bucks, but naturally you have the option to decide to donate any amount you wish.
So the North Carolinian blackish post-something-or-other band MAKE just saw their album Trephine (read my review here, in which I invent the term “post-atmospheric-blackened-doom-metal”) released on vinyl by Devouter Records not quite three months ago, and the original self-release (online and on CD) was just over four months earlier.
However, they apparently didn’t want to sit around and waste any time before getting back to work, because this morning the band announced that not only had they completed work on a new three-song EP, but that it’s all ready to be released in just thirteen days!
On November 1st, 2012 we’ll be releasing our latest EP, Axis, on Black Iron Records (that’s us) as a digital download via Bandcamp. We’ll include a PDF of liner notes then, but for now here’s the cover art [above] and tracklisting:
1. Axis
2. Chimera
3. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
You can be sure I’ll be bringing you more information about this as soon as I know anything new, but in the meantime you can keep an eye on the band using the assortment of links below…
Formed more than twenty years ago (in Norway, despite the eastern European name) and with a plentiful number of releases under their (presumably studded leather) belts, black/blackened thrash band Carpathian Forest have remained relatively quiet over the past few years.
Naturally, as is often the case when longstanding groups lapse into a period of inactivity, whispers began to circulate through the grapevine that their dissolution was imminent, as well as a variety of reasons for this turn of events — most prominently (again, as is often the case) being attributed to a communication breakdown or a falling-out among the band’s members.
Recently, though, the band have been appearing on a gradually increasing number of festival line-ups for 2013 (including a first-ever appearance in these United States!), and so it has become clear that these rumors have been exaggerated — if not outright fabricated.
So here’s some more exciting news coming from Italian label Code666 Records: the final details are coming together for a forthcoming release by UK progressive/atmospheric black metal band Fen, which the band just finished working on — this will be their third full-length album, and also their third release through Code666.
Not only that, but Fen have also renewed their contract with the label for another three album deal!
Frontman The Watcher stated:
We have been happy with the way we’ve been treated by Code666 in respect of the first three albums, and were impressed by the enthusiasm that the label has always shown for Fen and the faith they have placed in us, so it was logical for us to continue a relationship that was obviously working well.
Valley of Steel 