Category Archives: Videos

Out Last Week: Monsterworks – Man::Instincts (FREE Download!)

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Monsterworks – Man::Instincts (Mortal Music, 10 July 2012)

 
Whoah.

Despite all my attempts to stay alert and focused on doing my job, I think I might have accidentally dozed off a little bit just now.

And let me tell you — I had one fucked up dream.

Picture this: King Diamond and his band, Chris Cornell and the rest of Soundgarden, Rob Zombie, Glen Benton and the rest of Deicide, and all four dudes from Mastodon somehow all met up at a party, where they ended up playing cards and drinking and having a good time, and suddenly they decided they wanted to collaborate on a musical project. All of them.

Naturally, with so much talent in the room, nobody could decide who should be the vocalist, so they figured the only fair way would be to let everyone sing — sometimes they’d take turns, or sometimes they’d all join together in like this massive heavy metal choir. Something like the chorus in the Blue Öyster Cult song “Extra Terrestrial Intelligence,” just on a much grander scale.

Another issue arose when it came time to start writing songs, since they all came from such diverse musical backgrounds. But this supergroup soon discovered that they at least had some influences in common — all the great old-school metal, proto-metal, and hard rock bands. So they let this sound be the foundation for their new music, and as they began working together on the songs, they found that the little bits of death metal, stoner metal, thrash, NWOBHM, and whatever else kept creeping into the writing process seemed to mesh together surprisingly well. (I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense — I told you it was a pretty crazy dream!)

 
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Upcoming Shows: What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (17 July 2012)

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Allure of the Earth Productions presents:

Sons of Tonatiuh, Vulture, and Sistered

 

Mr. Roboto Project

5106 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh (Bloomfield)

 

17 July 2012 | 7:00pm doors | $7

 
http://www.facebook.com/events/285866544829061/

 
Atlanta’s Sons of Tonatiuh are making their way up to Pittsburgh tonight, to contaminate the Mr. Roboto Project with their southern sludge metal. This show is part of the band’s “Beckoning the End Tour,” which will continue through the end of the week with stops in Philadelphia, New York, Virginia, and North Carolina (see the image above). See their website for full details, including more upcoming shows in August and September.

 
Their new album Parade of Sorrow (just released in June) is available to hear or buy through Bandcamp…

 
…and here’s a video for “Consumed” from their 2010 self-titled LP (also available on Bandcamp).

 
 
Joining them will be those titans of Steel City Sludge, Vulture (who can also be heard on Bandcamp), and Cosmic Stoner Punk band Sistered (surprise, Bandcamp again).

Upcoming Shows: Some Bands are Playing in Delaware!

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Hi. I’m in Delaware.


 

 
Good evening. I’d like to take a few moments to talk to you about the state of Delaware. For any foreign readers (or Americans who are just really bad at history and geography), Delaware is one of the fifty states that comprise the United States.

It’s noteworthy for being one of the original thirteen British colonies that declared independance from the UK and went on to form the USA. Furthermore, its biggest claim to fame was being the first out of those thirteen states to adopt the new national constitution.

In the two centuries that have passed since that time, Delaware has done pretty much nothing else to distinguish itself. This is clear if you ever see the license plate on one of the state’s cars: they all have a slogan that says “The First State.”

If you look at a map, Delaware is a skinny little piece of land hanging off the southeast corner of Pennsylvania — as if Philadelphia just came out of the bathroom and failed to notice it had a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of its shoe. In fact, I suppose you could say Delaware is to Philadelphia pretty much what New Jersey is to New York City.
 

 

That’s weird, you know so much about Delaware. Who are you, fuckin’ Joe Biden?


 

 
Well despite all that, the residents of this state seem to think there is something more to the place where they live. I am basing this observation entirely on the one person I know who lives in Delaware, who happens to be a frequent reader and commenter on some of the same metal blogs that I read and comment on.

Recently he said something about how Philadelphia seems to attract all the good shows, and maybe if that city were destroyed, more bands would come to Delaware instead. I can sort of relate to this; although I live in the same state, I am almost six hours away from Philly, but it seems that many national touring bands feel one stop in Pennsylvania is sufficient. If I’m lucky, they’ll also come to Cleveland (Ohio) but that’s still three hours from here.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I just saw (via the always-helpful folks at Clawhammer PR) not one, but TWO bands who are playing shows in Delaware in the near future! Both are part of mini mid-Atlantic tours, and of course neither of them are coming anywhere near Pittsburgh, but when I heard about this, I felt it was my duty to pass the information along.

If you live in Philadelphia, Virginia, or New Jersey (or on the west coast), there’s some good news for you here as well.
 

 

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Time for Another “Signmeto” Unsigned Band Profile: Wearing the Inside Out

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Hey, what’s up, loyal readers? It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these “Signmeto Roadrunner Records” Band Profiles. For a few months I was doing them on a weekly basis, but some scheduling issues arose and — as you may have noticed — I ended up missing a few weeks.

So what the hell leads me back to the Signmeto website today — on a Sunday, no less, when I normally don’t even do any writing or post anything at all? Well I just learned that local (Pittsburgh-area) band Wearing the Inside Out, who have a few of their songs on that site, are in the midst of a campaign to raise funds for their upcoming east coast tour. I only just found out about this today, but apparently this is the last day (the deadline is midnight tonight, about SIX HOURS from now!), so I wanted to share it as soon as I could.

As I always do in these Signmeto Band Profiles, I’ll check out the songs you can hear on the website and tell you a bit about them. I’ll also tell you about the great gifts (CDs, t-shirts, etc.) you can get for helping the band out with donations…

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Now Available: Undersmile – Narwhal

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Undersmile – Narwhal (Future Noise Recordings, 28 May 2012)

 
If you spend any amount of time poking around this blog (and I highly encourage you to do so!), you’ll quickly notice that I have a fairly broad range of musical taste. Most of the stuff that I listen to would be classified under some metal genre or other, although not all of it. Everything else would usually fall into one or more categories of punk, hardcore, hard rock, or pretty much anything that’s heavy, but once again, you still couldn’t fit all that I listen to in such neat little boxes. Even just looking at the metal music, you’d find me all over the spectrum there as well, touching upon (at least to some degree) practically every subgenre ever invented.

However, one recurring theme you might discover, is that I’ve always had a certain affinity towards the sludgey, the grimey, the filthy, and in particular, the mind-numbingly slow. If it sounds like it was recorded with an hourglass instead of a metronome, chances are I’ll be all over it like zombies attacking a MENSA convention.

So naturally, when I first discovered Oxfordshire’s Undersmile (courtesy of American Aftermath including one of their songs on last summer’s Summer of Sludge compilation), I instantly fell in love, because they just totally hit all the right buttons for me.

Late last year when I heard the news that they were in the process of recording their debut full-length album, I was delighted, and later, when more details and some preview tracks started to emerge, I got even more excited.

Did you ever have something you were anticipating so much that you almost felt nervous about whether it would ultimately live up to the hype? Even if it turns out to be really really good, could it possibly be as good as you were expecting? Or even worse, what if the thing you were so convinced was going to be amazing — and that you’ve been telling everyone around you how amazing you think it’ll be — turns out to be terrible? Of course, you wouldn’t be looking forward to something that much without having some prior knowledge or some sort of basis on which to establish those expectations, so there’s a very small chance that it would, in fact, be awful — but there’s still that remote possibility. Isn’t that just nerve-wracking?

Well now that I’ve gotten my copy of Undersmile’s Narwhal and listened to it a few times, I’ve discovered that I didn’t even know the meaning of the words “terrible” or “awful”…

 

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Hey Look: A New Beastwars Video! Plus, Album Update!

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Good afternoon! Here are two pieces of good news all rolled into one news update. Both of them concern those disciples of the “tune low/play slow” philosophy, Beastwars, who (to be perfectly honest) also happen to be the only band from New Zealand I can name off the top of my head (unless you count The Flight of the Conchords).

Anyway, I’ve learned that their self-titled debut album — which has been available online since early 2011 — will see an official U.S. release in September of this year. Additionally, they’ve just announced the release of a video for “Empire,” the closing track on that album. Just like the rest of the songs on Beastwars, “Empire” is deliciously sludgey and grungey and noisy, as well as giving me the impression that one or more of the band members may possibly have owned (or at least listened to) a copy of Masters of Reality at some point in their lives.

 
Here is the new video, directed by Hamish Waterhouse (full credits available here). They say this took five months to put together, and looks to be worth every minute of it!

 
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Free Music Alert: Azoic – Gateways

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Azoic – Gateways (Self-released, 20 June 2012)

 
Hello readers! Since it’s been 90-whatever degrees here in Pittsburgh lately, and I’ve been sweating my ass off, sometimes it’s nice to think about people who live in other parts of the world, where it isn’t so infernally hot and humid this time of year. Now I’ll admit, I don’t really know that much about the climate in Iceland, but c’mon! They’ve got “ice” in their name! Even just thinking about that makes me feel better.

I don’t know what the weather is like wherever you are right now, Dear Reader, but in any case, wouldn’t your week start out a lot better if you had some new, FREE music to listen to?

Yeah, I thought so. I can help you out with that.

 
———————-

A short while ago, I was contacted by a nice Icelandic gentleman, who kindly pointed me in the direction of the band Azoic. Right around the same time, our friend Ben who maintains the Church of the Riff blog also contacted me, mentioning that I should check out this great band. If that wasn’t already enough, right after that I discovered that Phro, who writes short fiction on his own blog PhroMetal, had written about this same band in a guest post over on No Clean Singing!

Well with that many endorsements, I became really curious and had to check these guys out for myself. I’m glad I did, and I think you will be too. Late last month they announced that they were releasing the album to be freely downloadable, so keep on reading and I’ll tell you where to get it.

 
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Hey, Look: Another New Borracho Video

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Well here’s something interesting. Turns out Borracho has got a video out for another song from last year’s album Splitting Sky.

This song, “All in Play” is one of the more mellow, laid back grooves on the album — and at nearly nine minutes, definitely one of the longer ones.

The last few minutes of the song are made up of an extended fuzzy guitar jam, the kind where if you’re playing Guitar Hero, your fingers are about to fall off and you keep on wondering if the song is going to end soon!

But you aren’t playing Guitar Hero, you’re just kicking back and enjoying the pretty pictures of huge natural phenomena like waterfalls and volcanos, and possibly enhancing your listening pleasure with some sort of herbal supplement from your local pharmacy. Who knows.

 
Here’s the new video:

 
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Out Today: Power Theory – An Axe to Grind

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Power Theory – An Axe to Grind (29 June 2012, Pure Steel Records)

 
So who out there is heading out to the Warriors of Metal Open Air Festival today (or tomorrow, or both days)?

Well, I suppose if you were going today, you’d be there already. But I dunno, maybe you’re heading out later in the afternoon, or maybe you’re catching up on the latest Valley of Steel updates in between bands or something…

Myself, although I’ve been reporting about it for months, unfortunately I’m stuck here at work, which is pretty shitty because it sounds like it’s going to be an awesome time! (Although the heat and humidity are forecasted to be pretty brutal this weekend — hell, when I left home at 5:30 this morning the air was already difficult to breathe — so anyone who’s attending, have fun, but be sure to drink lots of water!)

Although it sucks I’ll be stuck inside a boring office all day with no throngs of screaming metalheads (and no alcohol), at least I can try to make myself feel better by listening to some heavy tunes. No matter how high I turn the volume on this computer, I know a pair of headphones will never compare to a huge stack of speakers on an outdoor stage, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Anyway, when I was trying to decide exactly what I should be blasting into my ears today, the perfect choice suddenly became obvious: the brand new Power Theory album! Not only is German label Pure Steel Records releasing An Axe to Grind today, but the band will be celebrating that release when they take the stage at WOM this evening!

Maybe I won’t be there to see it live, but I can at least experience it vicariously through the studio version — and for all those readers out there who are also unable to make it to the Frontier Ranch in Pataskala Ohio, I’ll tell you where you can hear some Power Theory too, and where you can get your own copy of this album.

 
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A Brand New TrollfesT Song? Free Download? Yes, Please!!

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image
 

That’s right, everyone’s favoreite True Norwegian Balkan Metal band TrollfesT, in conjunction with their label NoiseArt Records, have made one of the songs from their upcoming album Brumlebassen available as a FREE MP3 download!

All you need to do to take advantage is: go to the NoiseArt website, click the link and subscribe to their newsletter.  That’s it!

The song will be available for download for one week only, so hurry!  (Offer ends next Friday, 06 July).

 
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