Rolling Metal Thread 2012

cant remember who it was that pimped wizard rifle in the past (i think nate maybe) but let me just say HOLY SHIT.

super nice dudes too. great great show.

Anybody planning on seeing Negura Bunget? Their US tour kicks off tomorrow, and I can't go (show's in Brooklyn) but I really want a T-shirt. If someone's gonna be there (or at any of the dates) and can help me out, let me know.

Thinking of going to see Crowbar/Prong/Witchburn tomorrow at Cobra Lounge. A friend knows Witchburn, who I'm especially interested in, as I've been greatly expanding my Metal Sirens piece (update should be done this weekend, including Mares Of Thrace, Undersmile, Ides Of Gemini, Alunah, Worm Ouroboros, Shroud Eater & Dark Castle). I'm also enjoying the new ones by Royal Thunder, Castle and Witch Mountain immensely. Witchburn will be following up This Is How We Slay Our Demons (2010) with another Jack Endino produced album this summer. There's so much many good bands with female leads these days!

Yeah, I was just commenting to my buddy last night that this has been a really great year for female fronted metal, but ironically very little of the great stuff has been what I would define as "girly metal."

Anybody planning on seeing Negura Bunget? Their US tour kicks off tomorrow, and I can't go (show's in Brooklyn) but I really want a T-shirt. If someone's gonna be there (or at any of the dates) and can help me out, let me know.

was thinking of catching it but got sick, sorry. :-/

still curious... anybody know if they're good live? only one original member remaining, right?

I reviewed the new Pelican here: http://thumped.com/music-reviews/pelican-ataraxia-taraxis.html

Free download of the new album by awesome death metal act Dreaming Dead, today only. You have to give them your e-mail, but I'm sure you guys have junk folders.

http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/downloads/417574

I am indeed Wizard Rifle's pimp. They're hitting the full US now. Catch them if you can.

I enjoyed the hell out of Devil's Blood on the Decibel tour last night. In Solitude were kids having fun, but terrible sound. Devil's Blood really brought it. I'm sure Watain was good too but I had somewhere to be...

I heard the upcoming debut from Jess and the Ancient Ones, a Finnish band with some similarities to The Devil's Blood. I think I might like it even more than The Thousandfold Epicentre. They're included in my piece here - http://www.fastnbulbous.com/metal-sirens.htm, but I there aren't any links to stream via Bandcamp or Soundcloud yet. Hopefully they'll correct that soon. Writers who want to hear it can contact Tomi at Svartrecords.com. That makes seven new releases of heavy bands with female lead vocalists coming out in the next six weeks, and most of them are mindblowingly great!

By sheer chance, I learned last minute that another band that would fit my piece, Witchburn, were opening for Prong and Crowbar Friday night. A friend from work who went to hs with the drummer told me about it, and since it was sold out, got me on the list. I was so impressed, and bought the CD (This Is How We Slay Our Demons... (2010) and a t-shirt. The album was produced by Jack Endino, and they're heading to the studio next month to start on their next one with Endino. Also coming out later this summer is English band Alunah's second album, White Hoarhound, Purson's debut on Rise Above, and hopefully Spiders.

Saw Huntress and DragonForce last night. (Didn't see the middle band on the bill, Holy Grail, as I was in DragonForce's dressing room talking to them and their manager.) DragonForce are really good live - the new frontman, Marc Hudson, is about 6'5" and blond - he kinda looks (and carries himself) like a young, guileless Sebastian Bach. I mean that in a good way. He's totally excited about being up there, has already learned how to duck out of the way when the other members come forward for their solos or line up for guitar choreography (including the bassist and the keyboardist, who wields his keytar like a broadsword). They're playing four or five songs from the new album live, which considering that the new songs are on average two and a half minutes shorter than songs from previous albums, helps keep the set going that much faster than previous tours. Seriously, if they come through your town, check 'em out.

Huntress were pretty good, too. The band's instrumentalists dress in denim vests and jeans and with their long hair and beards they kinda looked like Valient Thorr, but they have approximately .0001% of Valient Thorr's showmanship and stage presence - they mostly stand in one spot, occasionally pointing a pointy guitar at the ceiling. Jill Janus is an excellent singer, but not much of a frontwoman - she wears more clothes on stage than she does in the band's promo photos, sporting a spandex catsuit rather than a tiny bathing suit on this particular occasion (and since she shouted out her younger sister in the audience, I was actually kinda glad about that, for her sake). But her voice is really solid. I recommend getting there early to hear them, if not necessarily to see them.

Funny thing about that show: It was all-ages, so when Janus came out to the Huntress merch table after their set, she was immediately besieged by, and spent close to half an hour taking pictures with, a small army of 16-year-old boys.

Hellbeard played with Behold! the Monolith on Saturday night in Reno, Nevada.. I talked to the bass player/singer for a minute, seemed like a cool guy. He invited us to L.A. whenever we get the notion to go down there, and he said they hook us up.. The rabid fans of about 25-30 that peppered Jub-Jub's thirst Parlor on this Day of the Loud Fest coaxed them into an encore, for which they granted.. Good, solid set of fist pounding metal in the HoF vein from those guys... And the 'Beard didn't play too bad either if anyone is asking..lol! especially for being 8 months since our last show...

Behold! The Monolith seem like really good people. And their album impressed me. Looking forward to seeing them live one day. Seems like they have aspirations to tour a fair amount.

what you say seems true, Nate.. Just booked Hellbeard to open up for them here in Oakland in June..

Twitter is buzzing about Roadrunner firing a lot of people...

Yeah, Roadrunner UK has been shut down, and rumours are rampant that the same goes for Roadrunner Europe too.

Soon only Blabbermouth remains...

Decibel Magazine Tour: unbelievably amazing.

http://www.thisisfakediy.co.uk/articles/news/roadrunner-records-to-close-europe-office/

Oh man, sucks about Roadrunner. Hope a certain poster's job is safe.

I still have a job. Can't say much more than that for the moment.

*couple of hours later*

"The rebranding of Roadrunner as 誤訳侮辱 Records is now complete. We look forward to your money."

man you guys reaaaaaly need to this wizard rifle album, ive been playing it nonstop since the show. track 3 is such a lumbering badass bruiser. great combo of GWA/lightningboltisms with sludge and O_O actual singing.

need to hear this. is what that is supposed to say.

Roadrunner Canada is apparently down now as well.

"We need backup NOW, we've received a direct hit to the Nickelback! I repeat, a direct hit to the Nickelback!"

Big metal package at Rhapsody this week, if anybody cares -- including two new 1400+-word essays by me on the state of the art (one more positive than the other one, which takes off from a SXSW panel about metal "extremeness"), memories by Jeanne Fury and Mike McGuirk about growing up learning to love metal in Catholic all-girls and all-boys schools respectively, and Justin Farrar on the state of Southern metal:

http://www.rhapsody.com/blog/2012/04/metal-madness

Sounds like there's been some culling at the US office as well – http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/record-labels/layoffs-at-roadrunner-records-founder-ceo-1006893352.story

Meanwhile, I liked your first article, Chuck, but I guess I wasn't sure what the thesis of the extremity essay was, other than that bands will continually try to be extreme and it will always be stupid?

Nah, nothing that dogmatic -- I think it doesn't do much to make the music better. And it does seem off-base to me to claim, as some of those panelists kept doing, that it's the main point of metal, and the one direction that metal is always heading. (One guy even kept saying that metal constantly gets heavier, which I don't buy at all.) But honestly I'm not sure I even know when bands are trying to do it (I can't read minds), and there probably are records I love that were trying. But I don't think I had a thesis at all, really. Basically Rhapsody wanted me to write a couple metal pieces, and I saw that panel was going on, and it seemed like something that might be entertaining to riff on a little. Otherwise I really don't think about "extremeness" much at all these days -- seems somewhere between pointless and imaginary to me.

In other news, I'm pretty sure I like the new Bible Of The Devil album a lot, and the new (post-humous) Woods Of Ypres sounds good to me too. But I don't like the Torche, Pelican, or DragonForce albums much.

And that definitely is crappy news about Roadrunner.

Don't really like the new Paradise Lost -- which I had hopes for -- much, either.

Yeah, that's a fair point. Extremity for extremity's sake is pretty dumb. I kind of think extremity is to metal what the philosopher's Stone was to alchemy, though. It's silly and kind of pointless and probably doesn't exist (in the case of extremity, it does technically exist, but it implies an end, which is clearly a fallacy since metal bands keep making things more extreme), but the search for said thing has led to some pretty neat discoveries.

Wow, just learned that I'll get to see Eyehategod AND High On Fire this weekend. They're both playing Dark Lord Day at the Three Floyd's Brewery. SUPER stoked.

Drop out of life with bong in hand, follow the smoke to the riff-filled land…

From a recent press release:

Black God, the new Louisville-based blitz rock super-group featuring Rob Pennington (Endpoint, By The Grace Of God, Black Cross), Ryan Patterson (Coliseum, Black Cross), Nick Thieneman (Young Widows, Black Cross) and Ben Sears, have announced a string of East Coast US tour dates taking place next month, including two shows in New York on May 26th (one matinee show at the city's legendary ABC No Rio and another "somewhere in Brooklyn" taking place the same night), in support of their new EP "II" out now on No Idea Records.

Described as a cross between The Wipers and Fugazi's "In On The Kill Taker," as well as Drive Like Jehu, Rites of Spring, Killing Joke and others, Black God has also recently premiered their video for new song "Everyone's A Friend" currently streaming above.

http://vimeo.com/39151725

Band has dudes from bands I like playing music inspired by bands I like. Not a shock I see potential here...

In other news, I caught Rammstein last night at Wells Fargo Arena, the basketball palace in Philly. I wondered what kind of crowd was taking the Ministry riff-and-repeat blueprint minus English and smack plus pyrotechnical ecstasy into a commercial realm that the likes of KMFDM never would come close to reaching. But it's just as well; as much as I enjoyed killing motherfucking Depeche Mode, I enjoyed watching these Germans kill the venue instead of merely play in it.

Seeing the show, I still don't know who is buying their records! The amount of industrial and Goth types were vastly underrepresented as were the metal contingency, though the latter at least was a sizable minority. (And they were old farts like me for the most part. One guy I ran into at the WAWA near my house was wearing a Sarcofago shirt!) The rest? It coulda been a Flyers game - middle aged dudes in polo shirts rocking out.

They had reason to. The band filled out the arena with explosions and smoke and melodrama and even some humor (singer Till Lindemann literally rode a giant penis that shot a faux load upon the hapless crowd during "Pussy). No shock that Kiss was an early inspration for them. They're exactly like Kiss updated with a dour ferocity befitting our times and mechanical precision befitting their homeland.

Rammstein seems to be written off as a gimmick in a lot of circles. I do not share that sentiment.

Black God sounds too good to be true. Hopefully it's not just a too-clever publicist who knows how to evoke the coolest influences (and push my Pavlov slaver buttons), and they deliver! Will check it out.

Glad Chuck likes the new Bible of the Devil. I haven't heard it all yet, but am going to their record release show tomorrow night at Ultra Lounge with Superchrist.

Seeing the show, I still don't know who is buying their records!

In America, the answer is "basically nobody." Their record sales were so low (and their insurance requirements so high) that they didn't tour the US for a solid decade. The only reason they're touring arenas right now is because of pent-up demand.

Yes, I want to see the Rammstein tour badly. And that's a fun little recap, NYCNative.

Oh, and I'm hugely jealous of Jon, I was just reading about that potentially incredible brewery show yesterday.

Speaking of extreme, these guys aren't extreme at all, except for extremely great: http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured/the-lazarus-pit-leatherwolfs-leatherwolf-1987/

Leatherwolf are great. The self-titled EP and followup LP are both a load of fun.

Oh, and I'm hugely jealous of Jon, I was just reading about that potentially incredible brewery show yesterday.

Yeah, I'm really thrilled. I've had tickets (this is really popular around here and usually sells out in seconds) since long before they announced the bands. I was already excited knowing Eyehategod was going to be there, but when they announced High On Fire the other day, I couldn't be more anxious for tomorrow to get here. Great music and craft beers all day? Yes please.

Today I am happy about the new Moonspell album, and that Nightwish and Kamelot are coming to Boston in September. If at least three of us from my company go, the company pays for it, so there's still time to interview for a job here and join me.

Whoa, new Prong is pretty rad. Didn't know they still had it in them!

I was amazed, I pretty much lost interest in Prong in 1992. This is one solid album.

I forgot to mention, Prong were really good when I saw them last week with Witchburn and Crowbar. They sounded much like they did in 1988-90 when I was first into them, but a dirtier, less pristine sound.

Also forgot that Superchrist are also celebrating an album release at the show tomorrow. Chris Black, man. Dawnbringer, High Spirits, Pharaoh, Superchrist, at one point Nachtmystium. How does he sleep?

http://www.ultraloungechicago.com/images/bible.jpg

caught inquisition last night. love these guys and they put on a great show... but I'm not sure they needed to play every song they've ever written

The latest joint endorsement from me and my 4yo daughter is Russian gothic/neo-trad band Dark Princess, who have apparently been around since 2004, but this is the first I've heard of them. Or maybe the potential of a metal band with "Princess" in the name just hadn't maximized itself in my life until now. The new album is called The World I've Lost, and falls somewhere between Christian Mistress and Xandria and old Warlock.

Well, I only ended up being able to see High On Fire last night. The whole event was set up more for the distribution of the beer than for the music part, so I was in line for my Dark Lord Imperial Stout when Eyehategod played. High On Fire were pretty good, but it was a bit of a short set.

oh dude, you were at dark lord day?