Tag Archives: USA

Hounds of Hate – Cassette 2012 (Free Download!)

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Hounds of Hate – Cassette 2012 (BHF Records, 22 October 2012)

 
Hey, good afternoon! Hope everything’s going well for you, dear readers. Here, it’s still pretty damn dreary and wet, but it looks a little bit less black outside than it has for the past few days — seems like that bitch Sandy might finally be leaving us alone.

Anyway, that’s all pretty much off-topic from what I wanted to tell you about this afternoon, which is how you can get your hands on some FREE music by a group of guys from my local area (not exactly the same part of town as me, but they’re from a little further downriver along the same valley that this website was named after) — plus how you can get a chance to see them play live (if you live in the midwestern or eastern United States, that is)!

 

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What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (30 October 2012)

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Hey out there in Iron City land! Trick-or-Treat cancelled or postponed in your neighborhood and now you’ve got nothing to do tonight? Why not try this on for size…

 
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More MAKE News…

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Hey there, party people! You might have noticed that I just wrote about these guys a little over a week ago, when I learned that they had a new three-track EP ready to be released at the beginning of next month. At that time, I told you that Axis was being released through Black Iron Records as a digital download on Bandcamp, on the first of November — which is just two more days away, so hopefully you’re as excited as I am about that!

But since that post, I learned even better news, with the promise of even more new MAKE material coming our way in the not-too-distant future!
 
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What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (27 October 2012)

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Hey Pittsburgh people! It’s the weekend before Halloween, so you know what that means — lots of people going out to bars dressed in stupid outfits! Also there are tons of bands playing all over town, so here are some of the spots you may wish to check out this fine Saturday evening…

 
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What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (22 October 2012)

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Drusky Entertainment Presents:

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult 25th Anniversary Tour

with Left Spine Down, Venus in Furs, and Una de Luna

 

at the Altar Bar

1620 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh (Strip District)

 

Monday 22 October 2012 | 7:00PM Show, 6:00PM Doors | $18 ADV, $20 DOS | 21+ only

 
My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult (TKK) began their career twenty-five years ago with Chicago’s Wax Trax! Records, and are now considered highly influential in the hybridization of industrial rock with electronic dance music. To celebrate this quarter-century milestone, the band is currently touring all over the country (see the full list of dates in the image at the top of this page), including a stop at Pittsburgh’s Altar Bar tonight.

Along for the ride is Canadian cyberpunks Left Spine Down (LSD), and starting things off for the evening will be a pair of local electronic artists, Venus in Furs and Una de Luna.

Grab your tickets ahead of time here, then check out more details at the Drusky Concert Calendar here and on the Facebook event page here.

MAKE Announce a New EP, to be Released Soon!

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So the North Carolinian blackish post-something-or-other band MAKE just saw their album Trephine (read my review here, in which I invent the term “post-atmospheric-blackened-doom-metal”) released on vinyl by Devouter Records not quite three months ago, and the original self-release (online and on CD) was just over four months earlier.

However, they apparently didn’t want to sit around and waste any time before getting back to work, because this morning the band announced that not only had they completed work on a new three-song EP, but that it’s all ready to be released in just thirteen days!

 

On November 1st, 2012 we’ll be releasing our latest EP, Axis, on Black Iron Records (that’s us) as a digital download via Bandcamp. We’ll include a PDF of liner notes then, but for now here’s the cover art [above] and tracklisting:

1. Axis
2. Chimera
3. The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

 
You can be sure I’ll be bringing you more information about this as soon as I know anything new, but in the meantime you can keep an eye on the band using the assortment of links below…

 
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MAKE: blog, Facebook, Bandcamp

Git Ahtta Tahn! (Your VOS Travel Guide for 19-20 October 2012)

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Sometimes you just feel like you need to get away from it all. If you feel like that either tonight or tomorrow, and you want to catch some great bands in the process, BUT you don’t want to go more than a few hours away, I’ve got just what you need right here.

Or maybe you don’t even live in Pittsburgh. I know there are people who read this blog from all over the place. So maybe you’re already in Ohio, or someplace closer to these shows than to the ones happening in Pittsburgh. In any case, here’s some info about some really cool shit.

 
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What To Do In Pittsburgh Tonight (19 October 2012)

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Looking for some live entertainment to entertain yourself with in Pittsburgh on this Friday evening? Here are some great options you might wish to consider…..

 
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VOS Interview: A Drummer Double Feature! Molasses Barge vs. Vulture!

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Hello folks, and a happy Friday to you! Just when it felt like it would never happen, the weekend’s finally here. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be an especially good one, because there’s a ton of amazing shows and events happening! I’ll have more on that later, so stay tuned.

One of them in particular stands out, though — tomorrow night at the 31st Street Pub is the first date on the joint headlining tour between Relapse Records artists 16 and Tombs. That by itself is reason enough to get excited, but opening the show will be two of my absolute favorite local bands, the heavy doom armada that is Molasses Barge and Steel City sludgelords Vulture!

I’ve only seen Molasses Barge once before (and it was over a year ago! — read more about that here), and (believe it or not) although I’ve been listening to Vulture for a long time, I’ve never had the chance to see them play live yet! So needless to say, I’m really looking forward to this show. I’ve already got my tickets (they can be ordered here) but if you don’t, it’s just twelve bucks when you show up at the door. More info on the show itself can be found here.

Anyway, in anticipation of this event, I decided to get a couple of interviews lined up. If you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, you may have picked up on the fact that I often tend to focus on drumming while listening to music. It’s just the way I hear things, I guess — and I don’t know if it’s because I play drums (occasionally) or if I chose to play that instrument because it’s something I pay a lot of attention to.

In either case, the drumming in each of these bands’ genres is one of the main things that attracts me to those particular styles. So, it only seemed natural for me to talk to the two bands’ drummers. Here, then, are the questions and answers from Molasses Barge’s Wayne Massey and Vulture’s Kelly Gabany…

 

 

 
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Wizard Smoke – The Tickler EP (Free Download / On Vinyl Soon)

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Wizard Smoke – The Tickler (self-released, 28 September 2012)

 
In a world that often feels overrun by generic stoner/psychedelic metal bands, where you can hardly turn around without running into another group of hirsute Big-Muff-pedal-stompers, who use more drug references per song than an entire Cheech and Chong movie that co-stars Bill Hicks, and who often get complimented on the cool fog machine effects during their shows when in fact they don’t even use one…

I think you get the idea. Anyway, in spite of all of that, Atlanta, Georgia’s Wizard Smoke have always stood out among the crowd, to me; their output easily meeting the standards set by some of their more famous fellow southern U.S. contemporaries, as well as that of any of the similarly-named bands you might think of, either across the country or across the pond.

My deep appreciation for this group began the very first time I heard one of their songs — that being the opening track from 2009’s Live Rock in Hell, the confusingly titled “II”. The rest of that album and the 2011 follow-up The Speed of Smoke both maintain a pretty consistently high quality of material, but “II” remains among my absolute favorites across the entire genre.

I guess the point I’m trying to drive home is, if you are a fan of all things fuzzy and sludgy, and you also enjoy harsh vocals that often veer into blackened territory, you really ought to be familiar with the Wizard Smoke catalog. Lucky for you, I’ll have some helpful links later on.

But first, I want to say a few words about The Tickler, the new EP they just made available about a week and a half ago. Like everything else the band has done so far, it’s good stuff — and also like everything else they’ve released, you can download it totally free!

 
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