Tag Archives: Pittsburgh

Person or Persons Unknown: Six Questions with Annakarina’s Craig Hodgkins

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Person or Persons Unknown

 

Six Questions with Annakarina‘s Craig Hodgkins

by Mrs. Valley of Steel

 

Have you ever been going to an event somewhere, where you don’t really expect things to be different — you figure it’s totally going to be a fun night, but nothing out of the norm — then suddenly after you’ve walked in the door, something begins and BAM!, you are completely blown away?

Yes? No? Doesn’t matter, that’s basically the exact scenario of how I first heard Annakarina: I was attending a punk show with the husband in Charleroi, PA, last December. This show was about five minutes from our house — quite a change from our normal hour-plus drive, so I was happy to be attending for that reason — but with the inclusion of the word “punk” I didn’t expect to be hearing something that he later described to me as “Post-Mathcore,” but we did. It was seriously gorgeous in its expression of angst and precision side-by-side.

So Annakarina and their music really never left my mind after the show. Soon afterwards, I found out that someone had taped their whole set and put it on Youtube, and I’ve probably watched it like five times since then — needless to say, I was a fan.

Anyway, last month we were attending another punk show at the same venue — where as it turns out, Annakarina was going to be making another appearance — and on this day I happened to decide that I needed to drink A LOT of tequila before the show (and during). Probably because we were so close to home I was feeling a little more rebellious, I don’t know. Drunk or not, I was extremely excited to see Annakarina again, but this time I decided that I needed to talk to those guys. In my drunken stupor, I basically poured my inner fandom out for them, sharing the fact that my husband was a blogger, that we attend shows at least once a week in Pittsburgh, all sorts of stuff.

[Editor’s note: at one point, I recall she had told bassist Kurtis Kelley about the description I made up the first time we’d seen them. He seemed a bit puzzled, but then said, “Well, I know what post-hardcore is, and I know what math rock is, and — yeah I guess I can see that.”]

I’m sure they were like, who’s this crazy lady, but even so they were all very kind. I got introduced to them all one by one, and in particular I felt drawn to [guitarist/vocalist] Craig. In between bands I talked casually to him (or as casually as I could manage — remember I was very drunk) about his music, his friendship with the drummer and other bandmates, and soon I realized this guy was special pretty special.

In a way, I was feeling sort of annoyed that no one else we knew really knew anything about this band — because I’ve never seen them at any shows in Pittsburgh, and (I mean this in the nicest way possible) honestly they’re better then a few bands that we’ve seen playing other shows in the past. So I decided I needed to introduce Craig and his music to more people — so there’s the core reason for this interview. I think you’ll agree he’s quite a special guy — that magical combination of intelligence, wit, weirdness, awkwardness, and sincerity that you couldn’t fake if you tried. So here he is, pouring his heart out to you, via my six questions; I hope you will find him as endearing as I do, and I hope you will venture out to the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg this Sunday to see his band playing a charity show benefiting PLEA. Trust me, Annakarina is a band you won’t want to miss, and this guy is one of the major reasons for that.

 
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Slaves BC / Cousin Sleaze – Split 7″

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Slaves BC / Cousin Sleaze – Split 7″ (self-released, 11 April 2013)

 
 
Several months ago, I wrote about a new EP from the Pittsburgh-based dark, caustic hardcore/metal band Slaves BC, which was titled we mean nothing. If you’re feeling especially adventurous, you could look it up if you searched for it, but I’m not linking to it here. Because honestly, it was among the worst articles I’ve written, and I wouldn’t advise taking the time to read it. Instead, just listen to the songs and download the EP, which you can do it you follow the Bandcamp link at the end of this page.

About that review — I’ve noticed sometimes when I really like something or really connect with a piece of music on some level, I feel inadequate to convey that in words, and so I end up rambling about some other nonsense that isn’t related to the actual music. In this case, we mean nothing. centers around the concept of someone struggling and perhaps questioning the validity or value of religion — and I sort of ran with that idea, focusing more on people who place too much value on religious principles, at the expense of common sense and moral decency.

Sort of lost in all of that was my opinion of the actual music — dark and caustic, as I just said; abrasive, ultra-heavy. Some music is described as “doom metal” which usually seems to foretell a bleak, dire outcome; some music is “post-apocalyptic,” representing that tragic new reality. What Slaves BC bring is more like DURING the apocalypse: there isn’t doom coming, it’s happening RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Anyway, one thing I did point out in that review was that the sound had improved dramatically over their first release, the demo album This World Shall Pass Away. With that in mind, the appearance of any new Slaves material should be really exciting. And GUESS WHAT — today we have exactly that! Two new songs, to be exact, coupled with a pair from the band’s comrades from New York, Cousin Sleaze.

The four-song split is available as of today on CD (if you come to the bands’ joint release show TONIGHT at The Smiling Moose in Pittsburgh — see below for details), and the 7″ vinyl version (in three different colors) can be ordered now, and will be out in the very near future!

 
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Person or Persons Unknown: Six Questions with Solarburn Bassist Tony Thomas

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Person or Persons Unknown

 

Six Questions with Solarburn Bassist Tony Thomas

by Mrs. Valley of Steel

 

    
The first step is admitting it, right? So here goes… “Hello, my name is Mrs. VOS, and I am addicted to Solarburn.”  I have seen them numerous times, and will again soon; I had their CD in the CD changer in my car for a record 12 weeks straight, and for a long time it was the band that I would talk about every chance I got. It’s not as if I wish to be cured of my addiction or anything; in fact I’ve decided to just own it, and I am perfectly willing to help others get addicted too.

This pretty much is THE band for me, the band that opened up a whole new level of musical enjoyment in my life, and the band that I shamelessly promote every chance I get, quite like I am doing right now. Yes, if you haven’t seen them yet, you’re honestly missing (in my humble opinion) one of the BEST things about Pittsburgh! But you can fix that April 2nd when they open for Otep at the Altar Bar.

They are three of the nicest and most genuinely no-BS guys I have ever met in my life, and these dudes can shred like nobody’s business. So how did I just pick one of them for Person or Persons Unknown? As hard as it was (and honestly it WAS hard, because I am lucky enough to actually be friends with [guitarist] Mike [Stains], [drummer] Russ [Tompkins], and [bassist] Tony [Thomas]), I ended up choosing the person I connected with immediately in the beginning, at the first show at I ever saw Solarburn play — way back in August of last year. Immediately, I felt that Tony was more than just an awesome bass player, but that he also a had deep knowledge of music, which I respected and connected with. As you’ll see from this interview, that is definitely the case.

 
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Vermithrax – Vol. 1 Sampler (FREE Download!)

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vermithrax-volume-1

 

Vermithrax – Vol. 1 Sampler (14 February 2013)

 
Hey! Remember back when I used to write about music? That was fun, I think I’m going to try it again.

So the Pittsburgh-based old-school thrash & NWOBHM-influenced band Vermithrax has some new material available for downloading and inserting into your ears. They announced this fact a couple weeks ago, but I was right in the middle of a million different things at that moment, so I grabbed myself a copy and planned to go back to it later.

Well, “later” ended up being just a few days ago, and now I’m kicking myself for not jumping on this sooner. If you’re already familiar with Vermithrax — perhaps from their appearance on the Innervenus free compilation Iron Atrocity Vol.2 (more info here) — then surely you understand.

If you haven’t heard that compilation yet, go download the damn thing already!! But in the meantime, here’s the Vermithrax song, “The Final Feast”:

 
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GUEST REVIEW: Grisly Amputation – Cannibalistic Tendencies

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Dear readers, as you should already know (because I just told you a couple weeks ago!), two Innervenus artists have CDs coming out tomorrow (Tuesday, 12 February 2013)! One of those is the death metal + grind unit called Grisly Amputation, with their debut full-length Cannibalistic Tendencies.

 
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Considering my professional relationship with the band, as the record label’s PR representative, it didn’t seem appropriate for me to write a review of their album, because it wouldn’t seem objective or unbiased. So I found a neutral outside reviewer who was willing to write about the album and then let me publish it for him. He was a frequent contributor to the “Sign Me To Roadrunner Records” website when I used to spend a lot of time there, and his reviews were always very thoughtful and detailed. Plus, as a musician in a death metal band himself, I’d be inclined to say he’s even more qualified to discuss this album than I am…

 
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GUEST REVIEW: Lycosa – Self-Titled EP

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Dear readers, as you should already know (because I just told you a couple weeks ago!), two Innervenus artists have CDs coming out tomorrow (Tuesday, 12 February 2013)! One of those is the brutal death/thrash/groove/sludge conglomeration known as Lycosa, who will be putting out their debut, self-titled EP.

 
Lycosa_CDcover

 
Considering my professional relationship with the band, as the record label’s PR representative, it didn’t seem appropriate for me to write a review of their album, because it wouldn’t seem objective or unbiased. So I found a neutral outside reviewer who was willing to write about the album and then let me publish it for him. He was a frequent contributor to the “Sign Me To Roadrunner Records” website when I used to spend a lot of time there, and his reviews were always very thoughtful and detailed. So I asked if he’d be willing to discuss this EP, and he graciously agreed…

 
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Innervenus Music: Two New CDs Coming Next Month!

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Hello, friends. Regular visitors to this website have surely noticed that recently the volume of writing I am putting out there has significantly decreased. I apologize for that. But it hasn’t been the result of laziness, I assure you. I’ve been getting myself involved with a few other things — as I keep alluding to in several new posts over the past few weeks — and finally I want to let you know about one of those.

So, I have been asked to join the Pittsburgh-based record label The Innervenus Music Collective to help out with their PR and publicity. It’s a pretty exciting opportunty for me — first of all, as a writer I’ve been working with a variety of PR people and representatives from other labels, so I understand what’s involved, and it’s cool to be getting some experience from the other direction now. But even more than that, now I get to work directly with a group of people who do so much to support our local music scene — between planning shows and giving away the Iron Atrocity compilations, not to mention releasing albums from some really talented bands (Vulture, Invader, Fist Fight in the Parking Lot — just to name a few examples that I had written about last year)!

And so this new position has been using up a lot of my free time recently, mostly because we’re gearing up to put out two CDs in February: the debut full-length by grindcore/death dealers Grisly Amputation, and a self-titled EP by death-thrash-groove-sludge-core band Lycosa. I’ve been sending out promo materials to a whole slew of websites and magazines, so we should start seeing some reviews trickle in shortly, but I figure I wouldn’t really be doing my job (EITHER job – as a writer OR a publicist!) if I didn’t also inform you about the releases here on Valley of Steel!

 
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Solarburn – 13

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solarburn-13

 

Solarburn – 13 (self-released, 14 September 2012)

 
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you — in my opinion — the #1 CD from all of 2012. Not only one of the best bands I’ve ever heard in Pittsburgh, but one of the best bands I’ve ever heard. And I stumbled into being a huge fan of theirs, almost by accident. Or some might call it fate.

See, these guys had included one of their songs (“C-Section”) on the Innervenus Music Collective‘s free Pittsburgh metal sampler, Iron Atrocity V.2 — a collection which I heard and wrote about when it was released last summer.

At the time, I was impressed by the Solarburn track, given that I’ve always been fond of instrumental metal music anyway, and (as I said in that article about the compilation), this song sounded “way heavier, more ballsy, and well, just plain more interesting than a bunch of the aimless noodly shit that’s out there.”

I also recall somebody involved with Innervenus talking about this particular song when the compilation was made public — I can’t find the exact quote, now, so I will paraphrase — playing the song for another person, that other person reportedly said something about how the song was absolutely perfect, and he kept hoping that nobody would start singing and fuck things up.

I was also intrigued to learn that the band had been working on a full-length album (which was to be unveiled at a show in mid-September), and thought that I might want to check that out — the new CD at least, even if I ended up not being able to make it to that show.

Anyway, within the next few weeks I heard about what was called the R.A.N.T. (Rock All Night Tour) in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I wrote an announcement that this all-day free music festival was happening, and what really caught my eye was the fact that the renowned local pirate rock band, The Bloody Seamen, were playing a show that evening. I’d been wanting to get a chance to check them out ever since I’d seen a few of their videos, so that’s just what the wife and I had planned on doing.

Well once we got to the Thunderbird Cafe, where the “punk” show was taking place, it was already extremely crowded for such a small area — and people just kept coming and coming, to the point where we felt pretty claustrophobic, and couldn’t find anywhere to stand where we weren’t constantly getting stepped on. Frankly, it was kind of miserable, so we were talking about just heading back home — when I pulled up the Valley of Steel post about R.A.N.T. on my phone. I saw that the “metal” show was taking place at a bar called Cattivo, just a few blocks away, and it had a slightly later start time — so we decided to see what that was like, before just giving up on the evening.

It happened to be much more spacious there, and there weren’t nearly as many people (at least at first). So we grabbed a couple drinks, found an empty table, and waited for opening act Solarburn to take the stage.

 
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Meth Quarry Interview: Pittsburgh’s Grim Hardcore Assault!

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Grim banner

 
Folks, if you’ve had your ear to the ground over the past few months you might have noticed that there has been some rumbling coming out of the dark underworld of hardcore. There has been so much hype swirling around the crusty, grimy beast known as Meth Quarry lately, that the band has reached a nearly mythical status — without having played a single show yet!

But all of that is about to change, because these guys are finally ready to come crawling out of the dank cellar of Pittsburgh’s underground and expose the good people of the Steel City to their grim “dirge” hardcore style. Last weekend I met up with the quintet (guitarists Chris Smith and Kevin Hogue, bassist Aaron Kaczynski, vocalist Adam Joseph Bailey, and drummer Brandon “Fluffy” Baker) to talk about the story of the band’s formation and what sort of things they’ve got on the horizon — I joined them at one of their rehearsals, which took place in the basement of Kevin’s house, so when I say “crawling out of the cellar” I actually mean it literally…

 
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Allure of the Earth: Winter’s Wake Line-Up **ALMOST** Complete!

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*** NOTE: ALL THE FINAL DETAILS FOR THE WINTER’S WAKE FESTIVAL HAVE BEEN COLLECTED AT THIS LOCATION: https://valleyofsteel.net/2013/01/28/winters-wake-2013-presented-by-allure-of-the-earth/ ***

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Ladies and Gentlemen, three more bands (***) were just officially announced for the upcoming Winter’s Wake festival!

At this moment the nearly-complete line-up is scheduled to run as follows:

 

FRIDAY, 22 February 2013:

*** Vektor (sci-fi thrash from Philly)
Black Anvil (black metal from NYC)
GNAW (experimental industrial/drone/noise, from NYC)
Vit (experimental black/doom/folk from Ohio)
Liquified Guts (brutalgoredeathgrind from Pittsburgh)
*** Meth Quarry (Grim “Dirge” Hardcore from Pittsburgh)

 

SATURDAY 23 February 2013:

Dream Death (doom metal from Pittsburgh / exclusive area appearance for 2013!)
Blood Ceremony (occult doom rock from Toronto)
Evoken (death-doom from NJ)
Occultation (traditional metal from NYC)
Vattnet Viskar (black metal from New Hampshire)
*** Derketa (doomy death metal from Pittsburgh)
Molasses Barge (doomy traditional metal from Pittsburgh)
Vulture (doomy sludge metal from Pittsburgh)

 

So that’s where things stand as of right now.

LAST UPDATED 10 January 2013: There will be a pre-show (no details available yet) on Thursday the 21st! More information about that, plus the full details (including venue and ticket information) for the festival will be announced on Wednesday, the 2nd of January, 2013. very, very soon. We hope. Any further information will be shared with you here at Valley of Steel, as soon as we learn anything ourselves! Stay tuned!

Facebook event page for Winter’s Wake: http://www.facebook.com/events/147586328726944/

http://allureoftheearth.com/