Tag Archives: Baroness

Horseburner – The Thief; Howling Giant – The Space Between Worlds (2019)

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Horseburner – The Thief (Ripple Music, 09 August 2019)

 

Howling Giant – The Space Between Worlds (Blues Funeral Recordings, 27 September 2019)

 

Good afternoon! Another week almost over, are you excited? Probably not so much, huh? It hardly makes a difference, since the days all just run together anymore. Hard to believe we’re coming up on three whole months of this quarantine, shelter-in-place, work-from-home, whatever you want to call it.

But on the other hand, it’s starting to feel like this is the way life has been forever — it’s getting hard to remember a time when things used to be different. Remember going out to restaurants, bars, wineries? Remember live entertainment? Sometimes there would even be entire events dedicated to bands performing music for large crowds of people, entire festivals. Remember those? Remember crowds of people?

It was exactly two months ago today that Ripplefest was supposed to happen in Germany, what would have been an all-day raging affair hosted by Ripple Music. I wrote up a thing announcing the event just a few weeks before the entire world flipped completely upside-down.

That event is tentatively being rescheduled for August, with a line-up yet to be announced. I hope, for the sake of everyone involved, that it works out this time. I hope, for ALL our sakes, that things are back to normal by then.

Originally scheduled to play at the festival in March were two American bands, Horseburner and Howling Giant. I’ve written about each of them before (here and here), but in February’s Ripplefest post I also mentioned that both bands had released excellent albums last year, and that reviews of both would be coming up soon.

The festival might not have taken place as planned, but at least I can fulfill that one small promise. And at least you can treat your ears to these bands in pre-recorded form…

 

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Sila Slona – Self-Titled; Montezuma’s Revenge – Them (2017)

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Sila Slona – Sila Slona (Zero Hero Recordings, 27 January 2017)

 

Montezuma’s Revenge – Them (Zero Hero Recordings, 03 March 2017)

 

Anyone who has read or watched any sort of news in the United States over the past few months may have noticed that Russia is being mentioned in connection with nearly every story that’s being reported these days. That country is currently discussed more often in this country, than any other time in the past several decades — at least since August 1991. Not even during the Sochi Olympics do I recall having heard about Russia nearly this often.

But I’m not here to talk about political matters, and you certainly aren’t here to read about such nonsense either. So it seemed like a much more fitting idea would be to discuss some Russian music. Specifically, here are albums by two different bands from Moscow, which were both released earlier this year by Moscow-based Zero Hero Recordings. Enjoy!

 

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supercorrupter – Amps. Anecdotes. Annihilation.; Horseburner – Dead Seeds, Barren Soil (2016)

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supercorrupter – Amps. Anecdotes. Annihilation. (self-released, 30 June 2016)

 

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Horseburner – Dead Seeds, Barren Soil (self-released, 08 July 2016)

 

Hey all you music lovers, or people who are indifferent about music but afficionados of rambly written words! There’s more of both of those in store for you today. I’d like to share recently-released albums by a pair of local (regional) bands: supercorrupter (formerly known as The Gingerdead Men and containing members of various other area groups such as DeathCrawl and Showboy) from Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio (between Akron and Cleveland), and Horseburner from Parkersburg, West Virginia (about halfway down the state, going north-to-south, and right at the edge of the Ohio River). Both of these just happen to be appearing at Ohio’s Blackout Cookout next month, but why not give them a listen today?

 

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Menhir – Hiding in Light, Sunwølf – Eve (2016)

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MENHIR - Hiding in Light - cover

Menhir – Hiding in Light (Tartarus Records, 17 April 2016)

 

Sunwølf - Eve [cover art]

Sunwølf – Eve (self-released, 18 April 2016)

 

Good afternoon, and a very happy Friday to you all. I don’t know about you, but for me this week just couldn’t end soon enough. It’s been kind of rough around here. Of course, for those of you reading this in Europe, it’s already late Friday evening and your work week has probably been over for several hours by now. And for those who are way on the other side of the world, it’s already Saturday morning and maybe you’re hungover by this point and already totally forgot about this week. I don’t know. But for me, the day is just about over and I’m totally ready to head home. Before I do, I’d like to share a bit of music with you, though. After all, that’s what we’re all here for, isn’t it?

After yesterday’s whopper of a review, I figured it might be nice to scale it back a little today, and only focus on two releases. The two that I’ve chosen to write about actually have very little in common with each other apart from the fact that they’re both scheduled to come out within the next few days. But I found them both quite enjoyable, and I suspect several of you might also like each of these — or at the very least one or the other just may be your cup of tea …

 

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BARONESS Coming to Pittsburgh — Win FREE Tickets!!

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Opus One Productions Presents:

Baroness

Sunday 08 May 2016

at Mr. Smalls Theatre, 400 Lincoln Ave. Pittsburgh (Millvale) PA 15209

ALL AGES, 8:00 show / 7:00 doors, $22.50 in advance / $25 day of show

 

Tickets are on sale NOW at Ticketweb… OR you can WIN a pair of tickets FREE, courtesy of Opus One Productions and Valley of Steel! Keep on reading to find out how…

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Intronaut – Habitual Levitations (2013)

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intronauthabituallevitationscover

Intronaut – Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words with Tones) (Century Media Records, 19 March 2013)

 

Hello there! “TFIF” and all that stuff. I wanted to get one more thing written and shared with you before the weekend, and in deciding what to talk to you about, I was feeling kind of reflective: looking both forward and back. Forward, because (as I mentioned yesterday) this year seems to be slipping by at an alarming rate. Before we know it, it’ll be time for year-end summaries and lists already! There are a few new records that’ve either just come out (or will be soon) that I’m sure will rank pretty high, as well as some from earlier this year I’ve listened to a whole bunch but maybe just haven’t had the chance to review yet. I’m going to want to get moving on posting something about all of those, lest I find myself in a situation like I did at the end of 2013 (where I put together a list of my favorite 26 releases of the year, 25 of which I hadn’t yet written about!) … which, of course, is what also has me thinking backwards. Almost nine months later, I’m still not quite halfway through reviewing last year’s list yet!

So I decided, there’s no time like the present; let’s discuss another of last year’s best albums. This is one of the more high-profile items on that list, or at least one that was put out via the biggest label. So a lot of you are probably already familiar with this band. But there may be some out there who haven’t heard Intronaut before, or may have missed out on this album — which would be a shame, because it’s really good stuff!

 

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The List of 2013 Year-End Lists

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Photo Collage - 2013 Shows - by Mrs. Valley of Steel

Click for full-sized image

 

Hey folks — a very Happy (Belated) New Year to all of you! 2013 definitely turned out to be an interesting year for me, with lots of big changes, new projects, new responsibilities, etc., but an unfortunate side-effect of some of that was (as you’ve surely noticed) that the amount of time I’d been spending writing really tapered off as the year went on, to the point where I didn’t post
anything here for the last few months! Well, as you may have seen, I’ve started writing reviews of some new 2014 releases — and as time allows I promise I will also be sharing plenty of older stuff I’ve missed writing about, because believe me there has been a TON worth sharing!

But more on that later. As I started doing last year, I’ve once again put together a collection of various people’s “best of” lists from 2013. Admittedly I sort of got a late start on this (I didn’t even put out the open invitation until after most websites had already finished with publishing all their year-end stuff), but several people have answered the call and contributed some really interesting lists that you’ll want to check out…

 

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The Huge List of 2012 Year-End Lists!

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Well, friends, here we find ourselves in the waning moments of 2012. It’s been an interesting, eventful year that’s had lots of high and low points — a ton of excellent new music has been released and quite a few brand-new bands have emerged that I’d fully expect to be making some serious waves in the near future.

One of the best things about 2012, for me personally, was that I found myself (and my wife) going to lots more shows than in recent years, and as a result I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of new people — as well as starting to take a way more active role in the local music scene.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I had a suggestion from one of those people I’ve gotten to know in the past year (I won’t say who — he said he preferred not to be given credit for the idea, although I will say that it’s somebody who contributed to this). The idea was to collect top-ten lists from various folks in the Pittsburgh metal community.

So I put out an open invitation for any musicians or other people who are involved in the scene in some way — I was looking for anything, whether it was the traditional “Top Ten Albums” or something totally off-the-wall like someone’s ten favorite sandwiches they ate during the year. Really, the only rules were that it had to be a list, and involve something from 2012.

 
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Get ’em While They’re Hot: Free Meshuggah Track Download, Ticket Giveaway

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Well, the nice people of Scion A/V have done it yet again, hooking you up with some more free metal.  This time around, they’re letting you grab the song “I Am Colossus” from Koloss, the new Meshuggah album that was just released on Nuclear Blast.

Here’s what Scion had to say about the band and this song:

The larynx-lacerating, off-the-meter metal of Swedish powerhouse Meshuggah is so distinctive that it birthed its own sub-genre, called djent. On this exclusive single for Scion A/V, the band plumbs heavy grooves as only they can. Turtle-paced but with tightly-coiled potential for acceleration, “I Am Colossus” is one of the best Meshuggah songs in their gem-stuffed discography. Power up.

FREE DOWNLOAD OF MESHUGGAH’s “I AM COLOSSUS” HERE.

 
 

And if that isn’t enough for you, Scion A/V is also giving away a pair of tickets to every Meshuggah show on their upcoming tour with Baroness and Decapitated.

  To enter for a chance to win:

1. Read the RULES and TOUR SCHEDULE: http://www.scion.com/Meshuggahsweeps

2. Follow ScionAV on TWITTER: http://www.twitter.com/ScionAV

3. Tweet “@SCIONAV #Meshuggah [date of show]”

Each winner will be chosen at random from the entries provided for each show. Winners will be contacted via Twitter one day before the concert with details on how to redeem the tickets.  Tour dates are listed below…

 

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