Well, today is election day. But left or right, blue or red, fascism or anarchy… whatever, there’s one thing we can all agree on, which is that a kick-ass show with mind-numbingly loud music is just the right prescription for avoiding the endless analyzing and scrutinizing and prophesizing that will be happening on every tv station in the country this evening.
Unless you aren’t a Corrosion of Conformity fan for some crazy reason, in which case, fuck you for being unpatriotic and un-American.
Hello and good morning! Who wants some good news?
How about this: the Italian blackened death metal band Mortuary Drape is nearly finished working on their new album — their first since 2004, and (if my math is correct) their fifth overall in a career that spans all the way back to the late 1980s!
Did you know Mortuary Drape was working on a new album? If not, then you do now! Throughout the month of October, they were updating their website with studio reports about how things were progressing — and it appears that the recording phase has been completed for pretty much everything except the vocals.
If you aren’t excited about the idea of getting some new material from these guys soon, then you probably just haven’t heard them yet. Try this on for size. Then take a peek below, where I’ve assembled a selection of photos from their various updates over the past few weeks — and keep your eyes right here, because I’ll be sure to let you know when I’ve learned any more details about the upcoming album!
Hey there. It’s Saturday afternoon. There’s some music-related stuff happening in Pittsburgh tonight. Read about it below, then go check it out. Pretend like I’m not lazy today and imagine some more clever words here.
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.
Hey out there in Iron City land! Trick-or-Treat cancelled or postponed in your neighborhood and now you’ve got nothing to do tonight? Why not try this on for size…
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!
Valley of Steel 