Tag Archives: Vulture

Winter’s Wake Winterview: Dendritic Arbor

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The Winter’s Wake 2013 Thursday Night Pre-fest Show is coming up very soon! Here’s an interview with another band that’s playing tonight!

Once more, since there have been so many different bands to talk to, I’m keeping these relatively short and sweet. Hopefully there’ll be enough here for you (the reader) to get a bit of background info about each band, and you’ll get excited about getting to see every single one of them this weekend!

Below you will find the result of chatting with Quercus, guitarist/vocalist for the ecologically-minded harsh black metal band Dendritic Arbor…

 
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Winter’s Wake Winterview: Derkéta

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Hello, it’s time for another Winter’s Wake band interview!

I’ll repeat once more: with so many people to talk to, I tried to keep these short and sweet — just enough for you (the reader) to get a sense of each band’s history, to learn a little about where they came from and what they’re doing now, so that you can be as excited about seeing all of them as I am!

This time, I exchanged some words with vocalist/guitarist Sharon Bascovsky from Derkéta…

 
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Winter’s Wake 2013 Presented By Allure of the Earth

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AOTE

 
So all the final details for this year’s Winter’s Wake festival are finally here! The venues, scheduled bands, and ticketing information all have been announced, and I’ve collected all of it right here for you!

 

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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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Happy (Belated) New Year!

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Cheers!

* Happy National Day (for those who live on the island of Menorca)!

 

* Happy Feast Day of Saint Achilles the Confessor (for those who follow the Eastern Orthodox Church)!

 

* Happy Birthday to Benjamin Franklin “The Guy on the Hundred Dollar Bill,” James Earl Jones “The Voice of Darth Vader,” comedian Andy Kaufman, bassist Andy Rourke, boxer Muhammad Ali, actress Betty White, FLOTUS Michelle Obama, and singer Eartha Kitt!

 

* Let’s also commemorate the passing of music producer Don Kirshner, chess player Bobby Fisher, and former U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes!

 
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If you can’t tell, I’m sort of reaching here, for any sort of a special occasion or commemoration to celebrate today. Since we’re now so long past the beginning of the year, I feel stupid saying “Happy New Year!” to you. But 2013 is still relatively new (and the majority of it is still yet to come), so I guess it really doesn’t hurt to still wish you a happy one.
 
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The Top Ten Shows I’ve Seen This Year: A Supplemental Video Guide

Posted by valleyofsteel on
This was me on Christmas Eve. In a couple hours, this'll most likely be me again.

This was me on Christmas Eve. In a couple hours, this’ll most likely be me again.

 
Good afternoon, Dear Readers, and a Happy Fucking New Year to you all! I hope you enjoyed the collection of top-ten lists I published yesterday!

Before we finally put 2012 to bed, though, here’s a quick supplemental post to go along with my personal contribution to that conglomerate of lists. I’m calling it…

 

The Top Ten Shows I’ve Seen This Year:

A Supplemental Video Guide

 
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The Huge List of 2012 Year-End Lists!

Posted by valleyofsteel on

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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Meth Quarry Interview: Pittsburgh’s Grim Hardcore Assault!

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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/

Allure of the Earth: More Bands Announced for Winter’s Wake!

Posted by valleyofsteel on

*** 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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Good afternoon, folks! We are getting closer to knowing the full line-up for next February’s two-day Winter’s Wake festival!

As revealed last week, this Allure of the Earth Productions event is taking place between Friday and Saturday, 22-23 February 2013, in Pittsburgh.

Dream Death, Blood Ceremony, Occultation, GNAW, Vattnet Viskar, Vit, and Vulture were all included in that initial announcement, but today there are four more bands confirmed:

 

 
Once again, there’s a lot to be excited about here… and I’ll be sure to update you readers with plenty of information about all of these bands sometime before the show happens, so keep watching this spot!

Also, over the next several days AOTE is expected to finally reveal the remaining bands (which includes one more headliner), in addition to ticket information and everything. So stay tuned for that, too!

UPDATE 19 December: three more bands have been announced…

http://allureoftheearth.com/