Tag Archives: Pennsylvania

This Weekend!! Gem City Fest 2014

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Hey! For those of you who live anywhere near western Pennsylvania, western New York, or eastern Ohio (you know who you are) — if you’re looking for something fun to do this weekend, you won’t find anything better than this: the Gem City Fest which will feature a ton of hardcore/metal bands. It’s happening all day Saturday in Erie, PA — just a couple hours’ drive from anywhere in this region, and once you see the line-up they’ve put together, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s worth the trip.

Full details can be found below, or to learn more, head to the Facebook event page.

 

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Two Reviews: Hivelords and Sadgiqacea (2013)

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Hivelords – Cavern Apothecary (Anthropic Records, 02 July 2013)

 

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Sadgiqacea – False Prism (CD – Candlelight Records / Vinyl – Anthropic Records, 07 May 2013)

 

Hey folks, Happy Monday to you all. Remember about a week and a half ago when I shared the details about a joint tour between Philadelphia’s Hivelords and Sadgiqacea? Well, that tour’s still trucking along — there’s another whole month left — and tonight is when they are playing in Pittsburgh. They’ll be at a cool little BYOB ex-warehouse/garage-looking spot called The Shop, along with locals Slaves BC and Night Vapor; plus the last minute of Pinprick Punishment who, I’ve been informed, are a hardcore band from Japan. It’ll be an early (all-ages) show — the music will be starting at precisely 7:30 — so even those of us who live an hour away should be safely home in bed by about midnight. If you’re in the area and you’d like to drop by, you can find more details here. I’m pretty excited about this show — as I said in that earlier post, these Philly bands are both pretty incredible to watch. If they’re coming to a town near you I’d unreservedly say you should totally go see them. If they aren’t, I’m sorry. But at least they both have albums out that you can check out!

Both bands had released a full-length in 2013, and I bought a copy of each when I saw them last summer; they’re both excellent and I’ve listened to each of them a whole bunch of times since then. But through an unfortunate oversight — Hivelords‘ was just coming out the same week these two bands came to Pittsburgh, and I remember seeing a press release about it from Catharsis PR, while Sadgiqacea‘s had been out for several months at that point and I don’t think I ever knew the actual release date — when I was compiling my list of 2013’s best releases, I only included Cavern Apothecary. (Instead of whining about it, I think I’ll just go and edit my list to sneak False Prism in there. Because once again, it’s MY list, damnit!)

 

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Wrought Iron – Rejoice and Transcend (2014)

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Wrought Iron – Rejoice and Transcend (Grimoire Records, 24 June 2014)

 

Ever since the band was formed (which was at the end of 2011), and especially since they started playing live shows (the following spring), there’s been a significant amount of buzz surrounding Wrought Iron within Pittsburgh’s underground music scene. People who’ve caught their live shows (often appearing with some pretty big names, like Abigail Williams, Absu, Alcest, Dying Fetus, False, and Nachtmystium, just to name a few) have reported being spellbound by the ferocity as well as the raw talent on display.

Well, that — and one other thing too. It seems like whenever this band is being discussed, the performance of vocalist Kenny Snyder often gets brought up; several times I’ve witnessed certain people (without mentioning anyone specifically, but I will say it’s almost always been members of other local bands) trying to imitate the combined snarl-shriek-squawk that these folks affectionately refer to as “like a dying pterodactyl.”

Anyway. I personally may have been a little bit late to the party, but after hearing them recommended so highly for so long, I finally got the chance to see Wrought Iron last summer (and a couple more times since then). I was very impressed by what I saw and heard — they definitely lived up to the hype, no question about that. Fast-forward another year, and we find the band recording an album with Maryland’s Grimoire Records, which is being released digitally (as well as on CD or cassette) today.

 

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Tours Galore: Hivelords and Sadgiqacea Together Again

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Hivelords and Sadgiqacea Are Embarking on a Joint Summer Tour

 

Hey folks, if you live in the eastern half of the U.S. (that is, anywhere between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River, plus just a little further west in the case of Kansas City, Columbia, and Des Moines), you’re in for a real treat sometime in the next six weeks. Two Philadelphia-based bands who each play a uniquely interesting variant of black metal — Hivelords and Sadgiqacea — are heading out on the road, starting tomorrow night in New Jersey, and spiralling their way through the northeast, midwest, and southeast, before finally finishing up back in Philly at the end of July.

I saw these bands last July when they both played a show in Pittsburgh, and it made for a pretty amazing experience. I’d highly recommend it if you are able. I’ve got a video from each of their performances at that show, below, and then I’ll share the full list of dates for their current summer tour.

 

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The Bloody Seamen – Ahoy, Motherfuckers (2013)

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The Bloody Seamen – Ahoy Motherfuckers (self-released, 19 September 2013)

 

Hello there, friends and fans of great music! Here’s something I’d been planning on sharing with you last week, but I didn’t have a chance to get any writing done all week because shit got crazy at work. Between someone on vacation, someone at a week-long conference, someone having to go to the hospital, and a temp who doesn’t know how to do much yet, my department was reduced by about half. Which means instead of doing the work of two people, I was actually working for like three or four. No fun.

But really, this review is way more overdue than that — the album I’m telling you about was actually released nine months ago (coincidentally, last year’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day), and I’ve been listening to it over and over since then. The debut album by Pittsburgh’s premier pirate rock band, The Bloody Seamen, impressed me and exceeded my expectations so much, it gained a spot on my list of 2013’s best releases. And today (finally!) I’d like to tell you why.

 

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Two Reviews: Eyehategod and Enabler (2014)

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Eyehategod – Eyehategod (Housecore Records, 27 May 2014)

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Enabler – La Fin Absolue du Monde (The Compound, 27 May 2014)

 

I will not be getting any sleep tonight. I’ve already accepted this as an unfortunate but unavoidable truth, and am now working on moving on. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve discovered that since about age 30, it has become way more difficult to function on litte (or no) sleep, and now that I’m hitting the halfway point of that decade, getting enough rest has become a very precious commodity. It isn’t ever easy, especially when my two-hour (each way) commute necessitates that I leave home at 5:00 in the morning, meaning I have to wake up around 4-4:30. That wouldn’t be so bad, if I were able to fall asleep around 10:00 each night, but that’s a rare occurrence — and tonight in particular it will be completely impossible.

I’m going to the Eyehategod/Enabler/Ringworm show at The Rex Theater in Pittsburgh (part of the tour I wrote about last week). The show is scheduled to start at 7:00, but in addition to the three touring bands, there had been two local openers scheduled (Under Everything and Hericide), and then somewhere along the way the Dune sandworm-named band Shai Hulud got thrown into the mix (I guess they are currently on their way home from a tour and just happened to be passing through town today and so now apparently they’re playing at this show as well). Naturally, with six bands, even if things kick off exactly at seven, there’s no way it’ll end anywhere before midnight — and that’s the absolute best case scenerio. Add in an hour drive to get home (that two-hour commute I mentioned involves bus-riding and walking), and I probably won’t be able to be in bed any earlier than 2:00. Falling asleep that late and waking up at 4:00 would probably make me even more tired and miserable than if I didn’t sleep at all. So here we are.

But, shit, what am I going to do — NOT go see Eyehategod in their first appearance in this area since …… well, the Bandsintown archive goes back more than seven years and doesn’t have a single Pittsburgh date listed. Neither does Setlist.fm have any mention of them playing here. In fact, the only thing I could find after an extensive five minutes of web-searching was a couple YouTube videos from a show in the summer of 1998. Basically the point I’m trying to make is, this is a pretty monumental event, and if I don’t take advantage of this chance to see one of the most important bands in the history of sludge metal, I might never have another opportunity.

 

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New Zealand’s ULCERATE Invading North America This Month!

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ULCERATE: Vermis North America MMXIV Tour Now Underway

 

Sometime in the latter half of last year, the bands for this month’s Maryland Deathfest were announced, and as I recall, Ulcerate was one of the names that many people were really excited about. At the time, the name was somewhat familiar to me but the band itself was not.

Well, a bit more recently, my family acquired a new tv which has Pandora Radio built-in — which is nice for putting something on in the background while working around the house, because previously we’ve had Sirius-XM satellite radio through a satellite tv provider, and now these Music Choice channels through our local cable tv company, and believe me, each of those options are equally worthless. So anyway, within the past few months I’ve seen Ulcerate appear a few times (mostly stuff from their 2011 Willowtip release The Destroyers of All) on one of our Pandora stations (I’m not sure which, but possibly Agalloch, which is a household favorite), so finally I can see what all the hype was about.

Anyway, getting back to my original point, the New Zealandian band is heading for the eastern U.S. for an appearance at MDF; furthermore, and seeing as how they just put out a new record a few months ago (Vermis, their first release via Relapse), apparently they decided to make the most of the trans-oceanic trip by hitting a whole bunch of stops across North America along the way.

This tour, presented by Metal Injection, will be the band’s first appearance in this part of the world since they had a mini tour in conjunction with an appearance at MDF back in 2012. Fellow Relapse artists Inter Arma will also be appearing on a handful of tour dates. See below for the full list, and then keep reading for a peek at Vermis…

 

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Atlanta’s Order of the Owl, Volume IV Hit the Road En Route to Stoned Goat Festival

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Atlanteans Order of the Owl and Volume IV are northwardly bound, on their way to the Eye of the Stoned Goat in New England next weekend. But along the way, they’re making a few pit stops — the “No Sleep Till Stoned Goat” mini-tour kicked off last night in Tennessee, and will be followed by jaunts through Pennsylvania and New York before hitting Massachusetts for Sunday’s festival. If you happen to live in the general proximity of any of these shows, I can’t recommend highly enough that you take advantage of your chance to check out both bands.

 

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Just Released: Gholas – Litanies

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Gholas – Litanies (Dullest Records, 11 February 2014)

 

Hello out there! I’m going to make this quick — because these folks are playing a show in Pittsburgh in just a couple of hours, and I wanted to make sure I told you all about them before that happens. Also they’ve got a brand-new album that just came out earlier this week, and so for those of you who don’t live near this area (or near any of their remaining tour dates — listed below), you’ll want to go check that out anyway.

I’ve written about new albums from people who happen to be touring and coming through this city before, but this one is pretty unique for me — because it just happens that my band LAST has been added as the opening act for this particular show! We’ll be joined by locals Low Man and SuperVoid (each of whom I’ve written about several times — see here and here) at the Rock Room in Polish Hill (1054 Herron Avenue). But of course the main attraction will be Gholas who are coming from Philadelphia. Based on their just-released album Litanies, I’m really looking forward to this one. You should be, too…

 

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Good Gnus (New Stuff From Inter Arma And Today Is The Day!)

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Good Gnus!

 

Hey, good afternoon! We’ll be returning to our regular schedule of album reviews and snarky remarks shortly. But first I wanted to pass along a couple of tidbits that have hit my in-box courtesy of Earsplit PR. Apparently there will be some new material emerging in the near future from two bands who both happened to be among the most impressive live acts I’ve seen in the past year: Inter Arma and Today is the Day. Also Inter Arma has a shit-ton of tour dates coming up over the next couple of months, including a stop in my nearest metropolis — and perhaps a city near you as well. You’ll find the full list below.

 

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