Hello, readers! How are you? I think I’ve officially recovered from the holiday weekend and am ready to get back into the swing of posting updates. Did you have a nice Easter? I’ve been spending a lot of time listening to Ghost, since I finally got around to picking up Opus Eponymous on CD almost two weeks ago. I like it a lot, but I’ve kind of got a funny feeling about it. I haven’t tried slowing it down or playing it backwards or anything, but I get the impression that there might be some kind of hidden evil messages or something. Oh well. Hey, speaking of which, they’ll be coming to town in just a few more days! In fact, they’re just one of a whole slew of awesome bands playing in Pittsburgh over the coming weekend. Just keep on reading for all the details on this show and tons more.
Tag Archives: USA
Upcoming Shows: Warriors of Metal Open Air (WOM Fest V)
…and while we’re on the subject of metal festivals on American soil that don’t suck…
Here’s the latest info on Ohio’s Warriors of Metal Festival, which is being held on the 29th-30th of June this year (which is, coincidentally, the same weekend as the birthday of a certain metal blog writer/editor!) in Pataskala, Ohio (just east of Columbus). Tickets are on sale now at this location; $50 for both days or $30 for either Friday or Saturday ($40 for both or $25 each if you buy your tickets in a four-pack, and youth tickets are also discounted).
This open-air festival is now in its fifth year, and this year’s headliners include two legends of American heavy metal: Wichita’s Manilla Road and Helstar from Houston, Texas! Plus, there will be a pre-show in Columbus on Thursday night, the details of which have not yet been announced can be found here.
UPDATE, 15 MAY 2012: I’ve just learned that the 2012 Promo Video for Warriors Of Metal Fest V Open Air has been released. The video was produced by the vocalist & guitarist of the Brazilian Thrash Metal band Machinage.
Upcoming Shows: Maryland Deathfest (MDF X)
As everyone knows, almost all of the awesome metal tours and festivals take place over in Europe. They’ve got Wacken Open Air in Germany, Download Festival at Donnington Park in England, Metalcamp in Slovenia, and what seems like millions of others — all with the most incredible lineups imaginable. Meanwhile, the rest of us are pretty much just forced to contend with tours that have a far-too-high ratio of shitty-to-good, like Ozzfest or the Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival.
Well, with a few exceptions, and probably the biggest exception each year is the Maryland Deathfest. This weekend-long metal party is held annually in the city of Baltimore, which as everyone knows was named for the seminal 1970s metal band Sir Lord Baltimore.
This year, the Deathfest is taking place between the 24th-27th of May, and tickets are available for three out of those four days. As we’ve recently discussed, Morgion had to pull out of their scheduled performance, but there is still a fuckton and a half of awesomeness in the lineup.
**Update (3 May 2012) — the official time-slot schedule has been released; details below**
Upcoming Shows: Across Tundras Heading Across the U.S.A.
Hey, just a quick heads-up so you can start getting excited about this: Nashville, Tennessee’s Across Tundras are heading out on tour in just a couple of days, and will be making their way back and forth across the country, almost non-stop for two months. A full list of dates can be found at the end of this post, including a few yet to be confirmed or still needing booked.
But first, here’s a small sampling of what’s in store for you if the band is coming near where you live (spoiler alert: they are coming to Pittsburgh!) If the name wasn’t already in use for a similar genre, I’d be tempted to call this desert rock, because in my opinion that expression suits this music perfectly: it’s very mellow and introspective, sometimes sparse, and it’s extremely heavy without being especially loud. I don’t know if that makes sense, when you read it, but have a listen and see what I mean…
Hey, Look: A New Borracho Video (Plus Drinking Game)!
You remember Borracho, don’t you? Their debut LP Splitting Sky landed on my Top 11 of 2011 list which was ever so graciously published by No Clean Singing. In that list, I referred to the band as “Fuzzy, grungy, balls-out stoner metal from the District of Columbia,” because that’s exactly what it is.
Anyway, just yesterday they sent out an email announcing that they were releasing the first official video from that album, for the single “Concentric Circles.” The video “frames the band’s live show energy and punctuates it with vintage clips of destruction, atrocity and mayhem,” and those clips are the key to the drinking game that accompanies it! As they explained:
… it wouldn’t be a proper Borracho project without an official drinking game to go along. So before you press that play button, grab many beers, assemble a throng of your closest head-banging friends and challenge them to a round of “Boom!” – a beer down for every explosion you see. That’s right! We’ve got your buzz all worked out: every time something blows up, you drink! It’s that easy.
Out Today: Vulture – Oblivious to Ruin
Vulture – Oblivious to Ruin (27 March 2012, Innervenus Music Collective)
I’d to apologize to you in advance for the following review, because what I am about to bring to your attention is going to seriously fuck up the rest of your day.
Today marks the official release of Oblivious to Ruin, the debut LP from “Steel City Sludge” purveyors Vulture. These Pittsburgh natives have been around for a few years now — they had previously recorded a self-titled EP at the end of 2008 with a different singer (this was recorded in Virginia with the assistance of Gwar‘s late guitarist Cory Smoot). The following year, though, they swapped for new frontman Justin Erb, and soon started working on new material.
The first material anyone heard out of this revised line-up was the track they recorded in early 2011, exclusively for the Iron Atrocity Vol. 1 compilation: “Prick of Misery” . That song was definitely one of the highlights from that collection, so of course I was excited not long after that when I learned Vulture had teamed up with Innervenus to put together a full-length album.
The band returned to the same studio in Akron, Ohio, where “Prick” had been recorded, and once again they worked with Complete Failure‘s James Curl. After hammering away at it through August and October 2011, Oblivious to Ruin is now ready to be unleashed upon a thoroughly unsuspecting public.
Reblog: Argus Interview with That Devil Music
Good morning, readers, I hope you are doing well today. I just wanted to share this with you in case you haven’t already seen it, because That Devil Music, one of my favorite metal websites, has posted an interview with Argus, one of my favorite semi-local bands! (Semi-local, because they are just outside of Pittsburgh too, but in the opposite direction from me.)
Anyway, you can read the interview here — and see the band address such topics as the reaction to their second album (Boldly Stride the Doomed, out last year on Cruz del Sur Music); whether they consider themselves “doom metal” (spoiler alert: they can equivocate about genre as well as anybody); and what the future holds as far as upcoming shows (special mention is made of them playing the 31st Street Pub next month for the Dream Death reunion) and their forthcoming third album.
Enjoy!!
The “Signmeto” Unsigned Band of the Week: Information Harvest
Hello, Readers! It’s Monday, so of course it’s time once again for the “Signmeto” Unsigned Band of the Week feature. As you should all know by now, this is when I write about an artist whose songs appear on the “Sign Me to Roadrunner Records” website. People contact me there all the time, looking for reviews of their music, and I am more than happy to oblige. I listen to whatever they’ve got, and then I talk about it here, and then YOU (the devoted reader) can go check it out for yourself. Maybe you’ll really like what you hear. There’s only one way to find out, so let’s get started.
This week, I’ve got something totally different to share with you, and I’ve also got a request. It’s audience participation time! Usually when I check out a new artist over at Signmeto, I find a few songs that they have recorded for a collection of demos or promos, or sometimes even songs from an independently released EP or album. The goal, ostensibly, is to gain further exposure for the band, possibly even (judging by the name of the website) the chance at a contract with a record label. Well, today what we’re looking at will be more like rough sketches of unfinished songs, which have been posted for the purpose of soliciting feedback. These basic outlines have the potential to turn into something pretty great, so I think you should take the time to listen to them — hopefully you’ll have some great ideas of how something could be changed or improved (I’ve got faith in you, readers, because obviously you have good taste in music or you wouldn’t be here in the first place!).
The music you are about to hear was put together by a Rhode Islander named Andrew James Liles. I’ve gotten to know him as a reviewer, through my interaction with other members of the Signmeto website, and he seems like a pretty nice guy. Recently, Andrew sent me a request to check out these demos for his project Information Harvest, because he is getting together with the rest of the band soon to rehearse and work on fleshing out these songs a little more fully. As it stands currently, these are instrumental pieces with Mr. Liles playing the guitar, bass, and keyboard; some of the guitar solos or leads here might be replaced by vocals but he says he is still “on the fence” about whether or not to add vocals. Also these tracks are supported by drum loops temporarily; Andrew echoes my own sentiments 100% when he tells me he hates drum loops — so let’s all agree to ignore the fact that the drums currently sound terrible and fake, secure in the knowledge that they will ultimately be replaced by a living, breathing human drummer.
REPOST: Help Make Iron Atrocity v.2 a Reality!
Ladies and Gentlemen, one last time I am bringing this to your attention, because this fine organization who is so instrumental in supporting great local music could really use some support from all of you right now.
There is now less than one day remaining in this fundraising campaign. If you have been waiting until the last minute, THIS IS IT. Don’t put it off until tomorrow (Friday), because the deadline is 5am tomorrow morning. As of the time I am posting this, they have only raised approximately HALF of their original goal. That leaves less than twenty-four hours to make up the other half!
For those unfamiliar with exactly how Kickstarter works, you don’t need to worry if maybe you don’t get paid until tomorrow and you’ve been trying to wait until then to send in your donation. This is just a pledge, you aren’t paying anything yet, until after the deadline has passed.
Note: If the pledge drive doesn’t meet its goal before the deadline, it will fail, no money will change hands at all, and the terrorists will have won. We can’t let that happen.
So get to clicking: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/240758996/iron-atrocity-v2, and show your support for local music. Please, if you have anything to spare — $10, $5, even $1 — it all adds up. But do it now, there is no more time to put it off any longer.
Thank you.
—Valley of Steel
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(previously posted on 15 February, 2012):
You might remember I talked about this project before — back in November I posted about some upcoming Molasses Barge shows which included a benefit show in Decmeber to support the Iron Atrocity v.2 compilation.
If you don’t remember, Iron Atrocity is a digital download (available free by visiting www.ironatrocity.com) or CD compilation (I do not know if any copies are still available, but it was given out for free at shows associated with Innervenus or any of the bands on the CD) which highlights some of the best in Pittsburgh-area metal music today.
Well, the second compilation in the series is currently in the works, and the folks at Innervenus are trying to raise a little extra capital to get this thing off the ground…
Continue reading
Just Released: Melvins – The Bulls & the Bees (Free Download!)
Melvins – The Bulls & the Bees (13 March 2012, Scion A/V)
I’ve just got two things to say: first, there is a new Melvins EP, and second, it’s absolutely free to download. Really, that should be all you need to hear.
The generous people who run Scion A/V have done it again, putting out a handful of songs by an incredible band for no cost or obligation at all. I still don’t know what they get out of it (I’ve grabbed a copy of each one of their free releases so far, but I’d still never be caught dead behind the wheel of one of their ugly-ass cars!), but I sure am thankful they keep on doing what they’re doing.
This time, as you can see, they are featuring a five-song collection by the Melvins, who surely need no introduction to anybody reading this. But just in case you just immigrated to this planet from Pluto, or you have been in a coma since Ronald Reagan’s first term as U.S. president, let me bring you up to speed. These guys almost single-handedly invented sludge, grunge, and stoner metal. At the very least, they were highly influential in the genesis of each of those styles, and have been consistently churning out quality tunes for almost three whole decades.
Valley of Steel 