Get Yourself Some FREE Chinese Metal: Rock in China – Core in China Compilation

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Core in China - cover art #1 (by Joe Wu)

 

Rock in China – Core in China (15 May 2012, Rock in China Records)

 
Hello readers! As you may have noticed, I’m pretty interested in learning about where different bands come from, and I try to seek out material from places that are unfamiliar to me. Well until now I’ve never written about any music from China, so when I learned about the Core in China Project, I decided it would be a great opportunity to share something that was totally new to me, and probably new to you as well. I’d never heard of Rock in China Records before this compilation was brought to my attention, but I think it’s really cool what they are doing — working to help Chinese musicians find greater exposure across the world.

Despite the censorship and controls on the internet within the Chinese borders, it seems that many people have managed to gain access to foreign recordings and videos somehow, and then post them to websites within that country (which basically serve as Chinese versions of Youtube, etc.); through these means, young bands have been inspired by some of the trends that are taking place across the world and are now able to produce their own take on many new musical genres and sub-genres.

Core in China (described as a “free online compilation of Chinese Metalcore, Deathcore, Nintendocore, Hardcore and Screamo bands that have been selected via an open song submission process from January to May 2012”) is an attempt to document some of what is happening within China (also including Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Inner Mongolia). It was officially released online about two months ago, as a free download.

Since this compilation covers a pretty wide range of material, I wouldn’t expect most people to fall in love with everything you’ll find here (for me, personally, it breaks my heart — and also makes my ears bleed a bit — to find that the awful trend of abusing auto-tuning has found its way to that part of the world), but this is a cool way to discover some music you might never have been exposed to otherwise. With around ninety minutes of music, there should be a little something for everyone here!

Below, I’ll give you a brief run-down on what you can expect from the tracklisting, as well as where you can get more information on the project and the bands, and finally where you can grab these free tunes!

 
Continue reading →

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

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

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!)

 
Continue reading →

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

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

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).

Just Announced: New Grave Digger Shampoo!

Posted by valleyofsteel on


 

 

 

 

 
More info: Grave Digger Shampoo, Chris Boltehdahl, Troy Polamalu.

Watch the original Head & Shoulders commercial here.

Upcoming Shows: Some Bands are Playing in Delaware!

Posted by valleyofsteel on

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.
 

 

Continue reading →

Out Last Month: Ne Obliviscaris – Portal of I

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

Ne Obliviscaris – Portal of I (11 June 2012, Code666 Records)

 
How’s it going, Dear Readers? I’ve got another amazing album I would like to share with you. I’ve been so fortunate with how much good stuff I’ve been coming across lately, I only wish that I had more time to write about it all so that you could have the chance to read about it and listen to it sooner! I guess what I’m saying is, it makes me feel guilty that my brain and fingers don’t work quite as fast as my ears sometimes…

Anyway, here we have Portal of I, the (relatively) new album by the Melburnian sextet Ne Obliviscaris. I usually have a pretty good memory when it comes to my history with specific bands, but to be honest I have no idea where or when I discovered these guys. Chances are, I probably read something about them over at No Clean Singing, or possibly at The Number of the Blog, since I’ve made an awful lot of discoveries through both of those places.

Oh and by the way, for all you former TNOTB readers who have been grieving since that website was lost in cyberspace, I hope you’ve started reading Oculus Infernus, the new home of head editor and writer Grover XIII. In case you haven’t seen it yet, the new blog can be found here. (And while we’re at it, No Clean Singing is over here.)

As I was saying, sometime, somehow I came across this group of Aussies, and I found them intriguing enough to “like” them on Facebook. Fast-forward to this May, when the band invited all their fans to “International Ne Obliviscaris Sharing Day” — when they planned to reveal an advance single from their then-forthcoming new album. I wrote about that impromptu holiday, and then shared the song (“Xenoflux”). Based on previous experience I had expected it would be good, but as it turns out, it was amazing!

To make a long story short, soon after that, the album was released in Australia and New Zealand on Welkin Records, a small, independent label run by one of the band members; right around the same time it was announced that Ne Obliviscaris had signed on with Italy’s Code666 Records for the rest of the world. This made perfect sense to me, since I’ve always found that Code666 tends to work with very good — and very unique — bands. So then the album was available all over the world, and about a month later, it’s finally time for me to share this masterpiece with you.

 

Continue reading →

Upcoming Shows: What To Do In Pittsburgh This Weekend (12-14 July 2012)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Good afternoon! Since I waited around till the last minute to do this last week, and then I ended up not having it published on time, I wanted to make sure to get a head-start this week!

Pittsburgh-area readers, or those who might be within driving distance of the city during the coming weekend, here’s a collection of a few shows you might want to check out!

Did I miss any? Probably. If you know of anything else happening this week, let me know — or if you have suggestions of events for any future week, let me know about those too! Thanks…

 
Continue reading →

Coming Soon: Titans Eve – Life Apocalypse (Free T-Shirt with Pre-Order!)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

Titans Eve – Life Apocalypse (13 July 2012, Self-Released)

 
Good morning, readers!

You may have noticed that I don’t normally publish album reviews before the official release dates. Part of the reason might be because I want to share things with you when they’re actually available for you to get your hands on them, because I know how short people’s attention spans can be sometimes — myself included! Sometimes when I read about something several months before it comes out, I might think to myself, “Oh that sounds great, I’ll have to check that out” and then I completely forget about it a few days later.

More than that, though, it’s mostly because I usually just don’t get around to it. I hear about loads of great music and I want to write about all of it, because I want to make sure the bands get the exposure they deserve, and I want to make sure YOU have every opportunity to hear about the new music you want. Besides that, I try to spend as much time as possible with something before I start writing — albums usually get numerous listens on several different days, so that I feel familiar enough with the material to be able to describe it adequately AND so that I can be sure I wasn’t hearing something wrong just because I was grumpy or preoccupied on a particular day.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an unlimited amount of time for writing, which means I’m perpetually running behind. I’ve still got a bunch of albums from 2011 I haven’t even listened to yet, not to mention how much stuff I haven’t had the chance to write about!

When I heard this album full of killer thrash music by Vancouver’s Titans Eve, I knew I would want to write about it and share it with you, but then when I found out that they have pre-order packages (either the digital or CD versions) where they are throwing in a FREE t-shirt, I decided I needed to bring this to your attention sooner rather than later! This Friday (the 13th of July) is the official release date, so hurry up and finish reading, then at the end of this post you’ll get the chance to hear the album for yourself, and I’ll give you all the links you need to take advantage of this special pre-order deal.

For my Canadian friends, I’ve also provided the dates for the band’s July/August tour of western Canada with Anvil, as well as a list of stops when they will be heading east across the rest of the country with Kill Devil Hill.

 

Continue reading →

Free Music Alert: Download the New Telepathy. Single!

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 

Telepathy. – Lucretius (03 July 2012, self-released)

 
Hello there, Readers. How are you enjoying your Monday so far?

I guess that’s kind of like asking for your opinion on receiving surgery without any anaesthesia, isn’t it…

Personally, I am really having trouble getting re-acclimated to the whole “working” thing — it’s like that feeling when you’ve been away on vacation for a whole week and somehow forgot how to do everything.

Oh well, I do have one piece of good news to share with you, that just might help give you a little bit of motivation (or at least help you wake up) today. I’ve learned that the UK-based instrumental prog band Telepathy. have just put out a brand new single!

 
Continue reading →

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

Posted by valleyofsteel on

 
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…

Continue reading →