What To Do In The Pittsburgh Area This Weekend (07-08 September 2012)

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Punk/Hardcore Show in Charleroi… featuring:

Consumed with Hatred, Scattergun, Meaning in the Static, The Lady and the Monsters, and Flesh Addict

 

at the Charleroi VFW

609 McKean Ave, Charleroi PA

 

Friday 07 September 2012 | 6:00pm | $5 | all ages (21+ with valid ID to drink)

 
Hardcore band Consumed with Hatred from Baltimore is coming to visit the Mon Valley, appearing tonight with Pittsburgh punks Scattergun, horror punk band MITS from Mon City,
California (PA) punk band The Lady and the Monsters, and finally, crust/grinders Flesh Addict from Belle Vernon!

It’s a lot of bands for one billing, but things get underway pretty early — 6pm — so come on down! Once again, the name of the game is no drugs, no violence, no drama; respect the venue, respect each other, have fun!!

RSVP here. Or even if you aren’t able to make it to the show tonight, check out the page anyway — it’s my first-ever attempt at creating a Facebook event! (Note: Valley of Steel is not affiliated with the booking or organizing of this show, just trying to do my part to help spread the word!)
 

 
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Castle Blood Reunion Show!

with Rabid Reason and Lythem

 

at the 31st Street Pub

3101 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh (end of the Strip @ 31st St. Bridge)

 

Friday 07 September 2012 | 10:00pm | 21+ only

 
Here’s a show that should need very little in the way of introduction: Pittsburgh’s legendary hardcore/crossover metal band from the late 80’s, Castle Blood, is reuniting, and hitting the Pub tonight! Joining them will be Rabid Reason from Kent, Ohio, as well as Pittsburgh’s own Lythem.

RSVP for this historic event here and here.
 

 
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Liquified Guts Sour Cream and Phibes Album Release Show!

with special guests Castle Blood, MorgueMart, and Lady Beast!

 

at Gooski’s Bar

3117 Brereton Street, Pittsburgh (Polish Hill)

 

Saturday 08 September 2012 | 9:00pm | $5

 
Come celebrate the release of Liquified Guts‘ brand-new full-length album — feast your eyes on the 70’s AM radio inspired cover (pictured below), then feast your ears on the putrid hideousness lurking within! Plus, get another chance to see the newly reunited Castle Blood (if, for example, you find yourself attending a different show Friday night), along with the incredible talents of MorgueMart and Lady Beast! Just $5 to get in the door!

 

What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (6 September 2012)

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Allure of the Earth Productions presents…

While Heaven Wept (exclusive Northeast headlining show!)

with Argus and Vermithrax

 

at The Smiling Moose

1306 East Carson Street, Pittsburgh (South Side)

 

Thursday 06 August 2012 | 9:00 pm | 21+ only | $10

 
Well folks, it’s finally here — the show everyone’s been talking about all summer long! You can catch the epic melodic doom majesty of While Heaven Wept in their only headlining appearance (as they prepare to join Cormorant and Primordial for a string of dates, beginning tomorrow night — more info here)!

A couple of heavy hitters in the local scene (Argus and Vermithrax) will be kicking things off tonight, so you won’t want to miss this one!

 

Allure of the Earth – While Heaven Wept, Argus, Vermithrax video flyer from Jim Pitulski on Vimeo.

 
Grab your tickets here, then RSVP right here.

What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (5 September 2012)

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Drusky Entertainment Presents:

 

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

with Scattergun, MorgueMart, and The Lady and the Monsters

 

at the Altar Bar

1620 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh (Strip District)

 

Wednesday 05 September 2012 | 7:00PM Show / 6:00PM Doors

$15 Adv / $17 at door | All Ages

 
Alright folks, you know who Jello Biafra is — former Dead Kennedys frontman, who went on to invent pudding pops, and then embarked on a long solo career that has involved a combination of spoken word and music projects.

Some time later, Biafra formed a band called Jello Biafra and the Axis of Merry Evildoers with guitarist Ralph Spight, drummer Jon Weiss, and basist Billy Gould. With the addition of second guitarist Kimo Ball, the band was renamed Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine.

Fast forward a couple more years, Jon’s brother Andrew Weiss has replaced Gould, who went back to doing the Faith No More thing, and now the band is on tour, with a stop in Pittsburgh tonight!

Joining them at the Altar Bar will be Pittsburgh’s own Scattergun and Charleroi’s MorgueMart (both of whom put on shows that come highly recommended by this blogger!) as well as The Lady and the Monsters (a punk band, who I don’t really know anything about — yet — besides the fact that they come from California, PA).

 
Buy tickets from Ticketfly here, get more information from Drusky Entertainment here, then RSVP to the Facebook events here and here.

Now Available: River City Rebels – Headed to Hell 7″

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River City Rebels – Headed to Hell (28 August 2012, Screaming Crow Records)

 
Hello again, readers, and a happy Wednesday morning to you! My vacation has ended and I’m back to pollute your in-box and/or RSS reader with random ramblings and desultory dialogue.

…and music, of course. After all, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it — to discover some new tunes, not to hear me whine about how lousy my day was at work or whatever?

So then, let’s get straight to it, shall we?

 
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What To Do In Pittsburgh This Weekend (30-31 August 2012)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

Argus, Iron Crown, Devil to Pay

 

at the 31st Street Pub

3101 Penn Ave, Pittsburgh (at the 31st Street Bridge)

 

Thursday 30 August 2012 | 10:00pm | $5 | 21+ only

 
Looking for something to do tonight? Head out to the Pub to catch Ripple Music recording artist Devil to Pay, coming to visit from Indianapolis. Joining them will be locals Iron Crown and Argus (be sure to get there early, as Argus says they’re taking the stage first, and dusting off a few songs they haven’t played live in a long time — or ever, in some cases!)

More details and RSVP here or here.

 
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Lurking Corpses, Mud City Manglers, Abysme

 

at Howlers Coyote Cafe

4509 Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh (Bloomfield)

 

Thursday 30 August 2012 | 10:00 pm (doors 9pm) | $5 | 21+ only

 
Another great band from Indiana (these guys are from Fort Wayne) are also coming to Pittsburgh tonight: horror punkers Lurking Corpses. They’re making an appearance at Howlers, alongside local punk rockers Mud City Manglers, and opening the festivities with some Pittsburgh-style death metal will be Abysme (whom you might remember from the Iron Atrocity V.1 compilation).

More information and RSVP here.

 
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Fist Fight in the Parking Lot, German Shepherd, Supervoid

 

at the Smiling Moose

1306 E Carson Street, Pittsburgh (South Side)

 

Friday August 31 | 9:30 pm | FREE!! | 21+ only

 
How’s this for a fun Friday night? The Moose will be full of heavy rock ‘n roll craziness as FFITPL take the stage (of course you remember them, from when I reviewed their self-titled CD earlier this year, right?), with two other local bands, German Shepherd, and the newly-formed Supervoid. Best of all, the whole thing is absolutely FREE!!

 

 
More information and RSVP here.

What To Do In Pittsburgh TONIGHT (28 August 2012)

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Allure of the Earth Productions presents…

Biipiigwan, VⒺⒼA, and Solarburn

 

at the Mr. Roboto Project

5106 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh (Bloomfield)

 

Tuesday, 28 August 2012 | 7pm doors | $7 | All Ages

 
So I guess somebody told the folks at Allure of the Earth that I’d be taking a few days off work this week, and I’d probably appreciate something fun to do on Tuesday night in order to celebrate my freedom. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. In any case, check out this cool show happening tonight at Mr. Roboto!

Biipiigwan are taking their filthy sludgefest out on the road — coming all the way from Ottawa, Ontario to pollute our fine city. The band is a new discovery for me (new as in, I first heard of them when this show was announced), but I’ve downloaded their 2010 demo album as well as their EP from earlier this year, so now I feel much more enlightened. You can too, if you check out the Bandcamp widgets below.

 
Nibaak EP (2012)

 
God’s Hooks (2010)

 
If you like what you hear, both of these are also available on CD — at their Bigcartel webstore, or I presume you’ll be able to grab a copy in person if you come to the show. Joining these Canadian visitors will be Pittsburghese instrumental metal wizards Solarburn (who put on a mind-blowing live show) as well as fellow locals VEGA (whom I have not yet had the chance to see play, but they’ve been described as “vintage metal” — hear for yourself at ReverbNation).

The scheduled start times are as follows: [Solarburn 7:45 | VEGA 8:30 | Biipiigwan 9:15], and the whole shebang should be wrapped up by about 10:30, so there’s no excuse not to make it there — even though it’s a school night or whatever.

 
Find more information, and RSVP, here and here.

Borracho Announces “Tres Hombres” Labor Day Weekend Tour Dates

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Hey readers, if you happen to live on the east coast anywhere between the D.C. region and New England, listen up! The Washingtonian stoner/fuzz metal band Borracho recently announced a string of dates running throughout the Labor Day holiday weekend, so if you’re anywhere near that area you’ll want to pay close attention to this.

We’ve talked about this band a few times, starting with a mention on the list of top 2011 releases, and including features on a couple new videos over the past several months.

 
Here’s what the guys said about these tour dates:

Borracho LIVE on the Tres Hombres Tour!

 
All work and no play makes Borracho want to hit the road! We’ve been spending too much time in the lab writing for the new record and we really need some fresh air! So, we’re hitching up the wagons and heading north Labor Day weekend for a short tour en route to the 12th annual Stoner Hands of Doom festival in New London, CT.

This will be our second appearance at the festival, and the tour will bring us to the city of brotherly love and New England for the first time. We’ll be playing four dates, kicking off in our home town of Washington DC, travelling to Philadelphia, PA and Boston, MA before our Sunday showcase at SHoD. We’ll be joined on these shows by One Inch Giant from Gothenburg Sweden, Black Thai from Boston, and Fire Faithful from Richmond VA. Spread the word! See the details on each show below, and on the Shows page of our site.

 
We’ve also mentioned One Inch Giant around these parts before, and although I might not have written about them (yet), I’ve also really enjoyed what I’ve heard from Black Thai and Auroboros. Fire Faithful is a name that’s unfamiliar to me, but they’re definitely in good company — as far as I can tell, the line-up for any one of these shows will be well worth checking out…

 

  • Thursday, 30 August – DC9, Washington DC – w/ One Inch Giant, Auroboros
  • Friday, 31 August – Gunners Run, Philadelphia PA – w/ Black Thai, One Inch Giant
  • Saturday, 01 September – O’Brien’s Pub, Allston MA – w/ Black Thai, Fire Faithful
  • Sunday, 02 September – Stoner Hands of Doom XII @
    The El ‘n Gee Club, New London CT – (full details and schedule here)

 
So once again, be sure to check out Borracho and friends if they’re coming near where you live. One of these days I hope these guys decide to venture out a little further — at least to this side of the Allegheny Mountains (the closest they’ve come to the Pittsburgh area, as far as I am aware, was a show a while back in York PA, which is still a few hours away from here). But for those of us across the rest of the country and the rest of the world — they did say something about writing a new record, so how cool is that!!?

 
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Borracho: Website, Facebook, Bandcamp

Feast Your Eyes (and Ears) On These!

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Hello there. It’s Monday morning. It’ll be a shorter week than usual, for me, because I’ve got a couple vacation days leading into the three-day holiday weekend (Labor Day is Monday in the U.S.A.). So, I suppose the knowledge that I’ll only have to suffer through a few days (rather than a whole week) makes it easier to bear, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s Monday morning.

So the best thing to do, that I can think of, is to go grab a cup of coffee, and blast some music into our ears until we can’t feel feelings anymore. I like my metal like I like my coffee: black, and strong enough to tear your soul apart.

 

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Out Last Week: The Faceless – Autotheism

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Autotheism album cover

 

The Faceless – Autotheism
(Sumerian Records, 13 August 2012 Europe / 14 August North America)

Well, folks, you’ve been looking forward to this for several years, and it’s finally here: The Faceless have finally put out their third album!

Well, when I say “you” I mean “a LOT of you” — here’s a band that has almost 200,000 Facebook likes (compared with the typical band I write about, which might have several hundred, or a couple thousand at most). So yeah, that’s a lot of people, and probably a good chunk of my faithful readers, hence the reason I felt compelled to pass along the details about this new album when they popped up in my in-box.

Do you know who was not among those hundred-grand-plus anxiously awaiting? Yours truly. The news of new The Faceless material left me feeling pretty indifferent, simply for the reason that I’d never heard this band before. True story. Now, I’m not one of those über-elitist types who refuses to listen to anything that isn’t underground enough — I like to believe I’m more open-minded than most — but more often than not, the modern style of metal music that’s currently in vogue (without naming names, let’s just say I’m referring to the bulk of stuff that gets played on Liquid Metal, or the bands that seem to have the most rabid fans among commenters over at MetalSucks) just doesn’t do anything for me.

Or to put it another way, it seems like the more hype that surrounds a band or an album, the less likely I actually end up enjoying it. Not that I purposely dislike stuff because it’s popular, it just seems to work out that way a lot of the time. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions, and so I would never totally dismiss something without first giving it a shot, but I also typically wouldn’t go out of my way to check something out if I got that sort of a vibe from it.

But part of that earlier post prior to the album’s release included a video trailer, and the small amount of music that was included in that preview didn’t really sound like all the other generic crap floating on the airwaves nowadays. In fact, it struck me as a bit intriguing. So I decided I wanted to check it out — to see what the big deal was.

So Autotheism officially hit the store shelves ten days ago (figuratively speaking, as I’m pretty sure they don’t actually have shelves at iTunes or wherever), and since then I’ve heard it from start to finish no less than ten times. At this point, I feel that I can confidently say, this is an amazing album and I strongly recommend you take the time to discover what it has to offer — I’m sure that you, too, will be glad you did.

 
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What To Do In Pittsburgh This Weekend (23-24 August 2012)

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Guardian Alien, Starring, Low Man

 

at the 31st Street Pub

3101 Penn Ave. (Penn Ave @ 31st St. Bridge), Pittsburgh

 

Thursday 23 August 2012 | 9:00pm | 21+ only | $5

 
The psychedelic swirls of space-rockers Guardian Alien (Thrill Jockey Records, from Brooklyn NY, featuring Greg Fox of Liturgy) are writhing their way to Pittsburgh, bringing with them Starring (Northern Spy Records, from Oberlin College), an amped-up, proggy krautrock band. Opening for the double billing of punk-powered weed-wizards are Pittsburgh’s own stoner punks, Low Man, who are celebrating last week’s release of their self-titled EP (see below to stream/download).

 

 
For more show details, or to RSVP, click here and here.
 

 
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Allure of the Earth Productions presents:

Abigail Williams‘ Last Ever Northeastern U.S. Appearance

with Anagnorisis and Lythem

 

at The Smiling Moose

1306 East Carson Street, Pittsburgh (South Side)

 

Friday 24 August 2012 | 8:00pm doors | $10 adv / $12 dos | 21+ only

 
There are only a handful of opportunities left to catch Abigail Williams on their farewell tour, so don’t miss your chance! Buy your tickets here, then RSVP here and here.