So looking back on 2012, the New
England metal scene did not disappoint. Festivals, club shows,
series, and CDs gave head bangers plenty of ways to spend their hard-earned
plastic. It was good to see metal slide deeper into brutality while upping the
technical game too. Some bands sharpened the traditional sounds, and a few
stood out with sick, twisted humor. Much to love, but when the mushroom cloud
settled, these are the 11 slabs of N.E. metal that stood out.
“Contaminating the Hive Mind” by Abnormality- Death with
brains.
“Gutter Choir” by Hivesmasher- Grind your mind.
“Death is the Only Mortal” by The Acacia Strain-
Scorched-earth metal.
“Fire From the Sky” by Shadows Fall – Why aren’t these guys
headlining stadiums?
“Oh Shit” by Dick Move – No bullshit metal-flavored hard
core.
http://dickmoveboston.bandcamp.com/album/oh-shit
“Solipsist Dream” by Pathogenic – Prog-death with a soul.
“Sloppy Seconds” by Sexcrement – Groove-death with totally
evil soul.
“Born of the Bomb” by Lich King – Goddam motherfuckin’
thrash, baby.
“Temple”
by Thy Will be Done – And this is the sound of a band hitting its stride.
“Second Grave” by Second Grave- Smells like stoner metal.
“Chemistry of Holocaust” by The River Neva- Melody and
brutality sandwich
Acaro playing earlier this month in Dallas (James Villa photo)
The coast-to-coast trek by Killswitch Engage and Shadows
Fall has to be one of the all-time great Masshole campaigns.
Shads and KsE helped kick start a metal revival both home
and abroad in the late 1990s. Both bands fired up the underground and likewise
made their marks on the mainstream with Grammy nominations and invites to play
Ozzfest and the like. Both band are still going strong, as Shadows Fall this
year released“Fire From the Sky”
(review here http://newenglandmetal.blogspot.com/2012/05/dark-shadows.html), while
Killswitch returned to its roots by reinstalling Jesse Leach as its singer.
This tour features Killswitch performing “Alive or Just Breathing”_ its
breakthrough album made in 2002 with Leach, though he departed the band not
long after its release_ even while new material has already surfaced since
Leach rejoinedKsE in April at the New
England Metal and Hardcore festival.
The Shads/KsE show brings the bands back to their original
stomping grounds with a show Wednesday, Dec. 19, at Pearl Street night club in Northampton, MA,
which, like other stops on the tour, is the kind of venue where the fans get up
close.
For Acaro_ the third member of this Made-in-Massachusetts metal
package_ these are some of the biggest shows it has played to date and marks
the first time it has been part of a national tour. Guitarist Felipe Roa says
things couldn’t be going any better.
“There hasn’t been a bad show for any of the three bands. We
play small clubs usually, so while these are small shows for them, these are
big for us, and we’ve been getting huge feedback from the audiences. And it’s
great seeing how the crowds get right up there to Shadows Fall and Killswitch.
Those guys can get right in and crowd surf if they what to,” Roa says.
Acaro is ready for this kind of attention. The band’s
independently made full-length “The Disease of Fear” was picked up by Goomba
Records for international release in October. Acaro formed in 2008 with has some pretty familiar
faces. Roa played in Chilean metal band Angor.
Singer Chris Harrell was in Burn in Silence. Guitarist Chris Robinson played in
Infinite Descent. Bassist Kevin Smith was in Bigfoot. And drummer Jay
Fitzgerald was a member of Overcast alongside Shadows Fall singer Brian Fair
and Killswitch Engage bassist Mike D’Antonio.
“Chris (Harrell) is friends with Jesse, and Jay has the
Overcast connection, but those guys really believed in our music. That’s why
they wanted us on this tour,” Roa says.
And Acaro is making music that qualifies as the next missive
from Mass that’s going to blow open the national metal scene. The guitar work
is crisp and anthemic, the rhythms relentless in a hard-core way, and the
vocals come wrapped in a diverse mix of dread murmuring and death growls. The
tunes on “The Disease of Fear” are tight-knit compositions, all dark and
foreboding but peppered with memorable riffs and melodic hooks.
Even though Acaro put out the record locally in 2011, Roa
says the band isn’t tiring of presenting the material, acknowledging that
especially on a national tour these songs are “new” to every audience. This is
a band clearly willing to put in its time, with Roasaying when not on tour Acaro rehearses three
times per week, playing “The Disease of Fear” from top to bottom _ twice.
“Before the tour we sat down and put together a set that we
thought would have the best impact. So far it’s going over pretty well,” Roa
says. “The key point to our live show is that we just throw it down.”
Roa says Acaro has felt the love in such unexpected metal
outposts as Gallup, N.M.,
and Salt Lake City, UT. Even the California Metal Fest_ which
was stacked with screamo bands_ gave Acaro a good response
“It was a lot of young kids and bands like Asking
Alexandria. But a lot of people still checked us out even though we were old
and stinky,” Roa says.
The only weirdness Roa had to speak of actually occurred on
the day we caught up with him. The band was in Columbus, OH,
scheduled to play in the venue where Dimebag Darrell was shot in 2004.
“It’s heavy shit,” Roa says. “We love him so much. It feels
awkward. I’m just trying to stay away from the venue until the show.”
No such shit should be in the air Wednesday, Dec. 19, when this Masshole Extravaganza hits Pearl Street nightclub, 10 Pearl Street, Northampton
Once Beloved is also on the bill and gets the concert going at 7:30 p.m. The
tour then heads up to Maine
on Thursday Dec. 20, for a show at the State Theater, 609 Congress St., Portland,
ME.
Acaro will be back in Boston
on Feb. 2 playing at Church with The Empire Shall Fall (Jesse Leach’s other project),
the River Neva and bunch of other decent heavy bands.
“We’re going to write and release more material soon. We
just need to decide how we want to put it out. We’re glad we did a CD last time
even though people said nobody buys CDs any more,” Roa says. “We’ve sold more
than 300 on this tour, so I think some people still do want CDs.”
Jonny Davy of Job for a Cowboy at Palladioum earlier this year (Sam McLennan photo)
Man, there really is no rest for the wicked. Usually this
time of year there are piddling shows and, at best, opportunities for
up-and-comers to make an impression.
But this year it’s almost worth cancelling the holidays to
make room for more bands to work, since nobody seems all the interested in
kicking back. The big catch this week is Job for a Cowboy’s return to the
Palladium in Worcester, MA.JFAC, who came through the city with the Summer Slaughter tour, this
time headlines the upstairs room on Saturday, Dec. 15, and brings along
Cephalic Carnage. The show starts at 4:30 p.m. and includes Legion, Conforza,
Sexcrement, The Summoned, Carnivora, and Your Pain is Enduring.
Marc Rizzo, guitarist from Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy,
brings his solo band to Club X, 681 Valley St.,
Providence R.I.,
on Friday, Dec. 14. The show also features Fear Reprisal, Black Mass (who, as video above demonstrates, just
kicked ass as a last-minute addition to a recent Metal Thursday bill at Ralph’s
in Worcester),
The Curse of Humanity, Necris, and Needlework.Show time is 7:30 p.m.
Speaking ofMetal
Thursday, not only will there be a regularly scheduled event this week but also
a show on Saturday, Dec. 15 marking booker Chris’s birthday. The Dec. 13 show
has Xenosis, Ramius, Scalpel, and Plague for the Cure. The birthday bash brings
in Shroud of Bereavement, Sonic Pulse, Replacire, and Seren. Both shows get
going around 9 ish and happen at Ralph’s Diner, 148 Grove St., Worcester,
MA.
Within Ruins and Fit for an Autopsy team at 6 p.m. Friday,
Dec. 15,at the Webster Theater,
31 Webster St., Hartford, CT.
Diecast, Dead by Wednesday, Rosalia, Flood of Arcadia, and Tides of Time are at
The Elevens, 140 Pleasant St., Northampton, MA,
for a 7 p.m. outing.
And sure it has bounced around a couple of venues, but Merry
Rockfest is set to go Friday, Dec. 14, at the Franco-American Club, 592
South St., Athol. The
music starts at 4:30 p.m. and the all-ages event features a shitload of bands
including Run for Your Guns, Scare Don’t Fear, Shot Heard Around the World,
Lydia Ayer, and others. Remember, don’t truck to Gardener for this one.
All this to get you to the end of the world, and there’s
plenty after it as well.
Even as metal mutates, it never totally lets go of the past,
which means there will always be room for Sonata Arctica and bands like it
playing a melodic, dramatic strain of power metal rooted in the glory days of
the 1970s.
Not that Sonata Arctica sounded dated when it brought its
current tour in support of “Stones Grow Her Name” to the Palladium in Worcester, MA,
on Friday, Dec. 7. Quite the opposite, actually, as the show proved that with
decent material and musicianship on the level that Sonata Arctica works at,
this strain of metal didn’t die when the Scorpions went limp.
Melodic death troupe Arsis is part of the Sonata tour and
brutal thrash band Black Trip from Boston
opened the show which played out to a few hundred head bangers.
Sonata Arctica leaned heavily on new material, turning “Shitload
of Money” “Losing My Insanity” and “I Have a Right” into highlights of the
show.
The opening “Only the Broken Hearts” likewise came from
“Stones Grow Her Name” and made for a thunderous start. Singer Tony Kakko moved
with equal ease through the harder (“The Gun”) and moodier (“Last Amazing
Grays”) elements of the band’s songbook.
Guitarist Elias Viljanen and keyboard player Henrik
Klingenberg supplied the necessary grandeur and sweep_ both in solos and through
the ensemble playing_to sell the epic.
Sonata Arctica covered a lot of ground during its 90-minute
show, with the Finns revealing humor and heart in their work.
Arsis, on the other hand, went straight in for a bashing.
The band plays with a punk-like abandon, but “The Face of My Innocence" showed
how Arsis could stretch out with a precise, focused delivery too. Definitely
root out “Leper’s Caress,” the band’s new free EP from which singer James
Malone rasped “Carve My Cross” during Arsis’ too-brief set.
Black Trip played a relentless show, chugging through 20
minutes of material before taking a break to introduce its namesake song.
Singer and guitarist Gennaro Ammendola provided dark, brooding counter point to
guitarist Ben Levin’s frenetic playing. Drummer Jeff Hale triggered the
seamless transitions amid crazed, shattered rhythm patterns he created with
bassist Trevor McCabe.Black Trip’s
tunes split the difference of what the touring bands offered, as the local
outfit’s sound was harsh and confrontational like Arsis’ tunes but lyrically
looked outward like Sonata Arctica’s material.
Forget verse-chorus-verse. Toss out the “here’s where we play
a breakdown” formula. Don’t go looking for a big guitar solo. Just let The
River Neva wash over you; actually the listen won’t be quite so gentle.
The River Neva has its own take on the prog-death dynamic
that is rejuvenating the metal scene at the moment. In the case of this Worcester,
MA, quintet, the music has melody, which gives you something to hang onto as a
song barrels forward, but nothing on the band’s EP “Chemistry of Holocaust”
sounds predictable or otherwise provides familiar safe haven.
Catching up with singer Trey Holton and bass player Jake
O’Connor_ vets of the Central Mass metal scene_ both say they have never really
been part of a project like The River Neva.
“This band is pushing me vocally and I know it’s pushing the
other guys as well,” Holton says. O’Connor
concurs, saying some of the complex bass lines he comes up with now would have had him tossed out of a few of the bands he used to play with.
The boundary-busting begins with guitarist Grizz Gagnon who
is the band’s main songwriter. Credited by his band mates with having a taste
for music by Periphery and Veil of Maya, Gagnon cooked up songs that are both
brutal and adventurous.
“There’s a smartness factor,” says O’Connor. “This is not
the band if you just want to hear chug-chug-chug.”
Instead you get “Corpse in Blistered Feet,” a song with a perfect
death metal title and vibe yet mixes in some clean vocals and a lurching tempo
that creates coiled tension.
The River Neva teamed with producer Rob Gil (whose credits
include albums by Hatebreed and Unearth) to make “Chemistry of Holocaust” and
that’s when the band honed its sound.
“He fooled around with our sound in the studio and then we
started writing and rewriting in the studio,” Holton says. "Every time I went
into the studio before, everything was all set down in advance.”
But there’s no denying the success of the approach used
here. Holton points to “Burn the Note to Jesus,” the most sinister track on the
EP, and says how Gil totally reworked the vocal lines because he heard an
anthem waiting to get sprung.
The River Neva
Guitarist Chris Abbott and drummer Eric Zarazinski round out The River Neva lineup. The band headlines a Toys for Tots benefit happening
Sunday Dec. 9 at Tammany Club, 43 Pleasant St., Worcester, MA. The all-ages
show starts at 2 p.m. and also features Fuel of War, Tester, Mucklers Circle,
Burns From Within, the Circadian Rhythm, Blackheart Epidemic, Faces of the
Fallen, and John Monstro. Admission is $10 or $5 with a toy to donate. The
River Neva goes on around 8:15.
The River Neva also has shows on Feb. 2 at Church, 69
Kilmarnock St., Boston,
MA, and Feb. 8 at Silk City,
99 Main St., Florence, MA.
Holton says the band is tossing a couple of new songs into its
upcoming live shows but for the most part is sitting on the rest of the new
material getting prepped with Gil for a full-length release due out next year
After all, things tend to change as the process moves along.
Other holiday happenings for metal fans include the
Christmas Chaos Show happening Dec. 15 at Elks Lodge, 81 Roxbury St., Keene, NH. The show starts at 4 p.m. and features
My Missing Half, Eyes Set West, Help Me Kill My Ex, No More Lies, Side Effects
may Include, and Monarch.
Then on Dec. 27, it’s Black Christmas at the Palladium, 261 Main St., Worcester,
MA, with Conforza, Pathogenic, Murdoc,
and a World Without. Show time is 6 p.m. and the show is in the upstairs room.
And buy all means if you're out tonight, Dec. 6, stop into Ralph's Diner in Worcester, MA, for Metal Thursday. Abnormality tops the bill.
If you think the past 20 years of rock_ fuck it, music in
general_ have been a big suck, then Hotblack is the band for you.
Formed in 2004, the quartet sticks to a restricted diet of
old-school punk and hardcore, melodic metal, and groove that never slows to
stoner speeds. Guitarist Todd Cuff says the whole idea of hotel-room smashing,
whiskey guzzling, cash bathing hedonism is the inspiration behind Hotblack, but
you’d be hard pressed to find anything quite so indulgent in the music itself.
Instead, Cuff, singer and guitarist Airworlf, bassist Dan
Egan, and drummer Josh Puza knock out two-minute tunes full of snot and piss,
and they don’t care what you think about their Camaro-stealing ways.
Even though these guys are coming from different
backgrounds_ Egan, for instance, was in Western Mass death-metal stalwarts
Exhumed_ they find common ground that’s both familiar and their own. You start
to think the band is heading off into a Motorhead direction and it suddenly
swerves into something more punk. When things get Ramones-y, count on metal to
come barreling in. None of it is jarring (at least in a bad way). Actually, it swings.
“I could toss up a black metal tune and Airwolf would make
it swing. That’s just the way he is,” Cuff says.
Dan Egan on bass and Airwolf on guitar (Return to the Pit photo)
Hotblack, whose flat-out slash 'n' burn set at this year's Rock and Shock fest in Worcester reportedly put a kink in Jerry Only's devil lock, has a pair of shows coming up. The first is
Saturday, Dec. 1, at the Elevens, 140 Pleasant St.,
Northampton. That bill also has
Palace in Thunderland (featuring ex-Black Pyramid members), and Planetoid. Then
on Dec. 15, Hotblack teams with Humanoid at No Problemo, 813 Purchase St., New Bedford.
And maybe in time for Christmas the band will haul out
remaining copies of “Rock n Roll Will Destroy Your Life,” the CD released in
2008, disappeared for a few years, and returned in limited quantities in the
fall.
“Maybe we’ll just release it every October like a seasonal
beer,” says Cuff. Any new stuff is likely going to simply go up online since in
the guitarist’s estimation there is no music business to speak of.
And he doesn’t know which is worse: no more gold-plated tour
jets or a world where bands flog their gigs on Facebook.
“I hate to whore on Facebook. It’s the least rock ’n’ roll
thing imaginable,” Cuff says “Can you imagine Jimmy Page using Facebook to
announce a gig? Ozzy would have never used Facebook. He’d just announce a gig
five minutes before it happened and that’s fine.”
Fog Wizard’s new “Anything Metal Will Do” may be just
five-songs long, but that’s enough time for this band to run a course from
murder to monsters to some more murder and a few points in between. It all raw
and rough, but pretty unchained as singer Captain Motherfucker navigates punk,
doom, and death elements crammed into E.P.
“Lobo” gets things going on an impressively gruesome note as
the band rips through a tale of abuse met with ax-wielding vengeance. Evil McDeathington pops the cork with a bit of bass bashing before drummer Gott
der Kettensagen keeps a steady death-march beat over which Darth Drewcifer666
deploys a variety of guitar squeals and screeches. Capt. Motherfucker narrates
the story of our psycho Lobo (last spotted in New Hampshire), and sets up a lunatic
pace that the rest of the band works around for the remainder of the project.
“Metal Warriors” is more or less ode to Motorhead, with the
thrash ’n’ punk approach carried over to “Fear the Kraken,” a bit of monster
metal that would sound at home in a Dethklok set.
But before anyone thinks Fog Wizard is just shitting around,
the band cranks out the brutal punked-up “Meat is Murder,” a song that says
"screw" to preaching and just gets down to the nitty gritty of the shit and blood
of slaughterhouse livin’.
“Gone” closes out the disc with a blast of doom, though in this
case der Kettensagen gets all schizophrenic on the kit while the bass and
guitar lock down the groove.
Fog Wizard’s CD-release show for “Anything Metal Will Do”
happens Monday, Nov. 26, at the Middle East in Cambridge. Sunken Ships,
Earthstomper, Descend Upon The Sane, and Black Trip are also on the bill. The
show is 18+ and doors open at 7 p.m.
This marks the inaugural show of Metal
Monday, a monthly showcase of local and regional metal bands that LT Live is
booking into the Middle East. Seren and
Boarcorpse will be on the Dec. 10 Metal Monday bill.
Hivesmasher’s “Gutter Choir” is the sound of crazy pushed to
the point where songs could fall apart with the slightest nudge from an extra
drum beat, scream, or guitar note.
“That’s a line we live on,” says Hivesmasher drummer Tim
Brault. “Some songs teeter on the edge of losing it. Early Slayer is like that.
It’s like they were trying to cram so much into a song so fast that it sounds
like it’s about to break.”
“Gutter Choir” is the latest from the Mass grindcore troupe
comprised of singer Aaron Heinold, guitarists Tyler Kingsland and Julius
Hayden, keyboard player Dan Bolton, bass player Ali Ghorashi, and Brault. Black
Market Activities released the tunes on vinyl LP and downloads, which are
available on Bandcamp and usual outlets. Indiemerch.com is also carrying the
vinyl.
After a few lineup changes, Hivesmasher drops the hammer in
a big way with this album that veers from minute-and-a-half blow outs to longer
beat downs, like the five-minute “Damage (P)inc.” The songs titles alone are
entertaining _ “Vomitouch,” “Can of Awesometism,” “The Shit Waltz.”
But this ain’t novelty metal. Heinold brings the hell down
on every song, with a mix of punk economy and disciplined spazzed-out thrash
guitar riffs backing his vocal assaults. There's not much concern for orthodoxy, as you find singer Jake Burns from death-prog outfit Pathogenic joining in on the particularly scabby “Used
Food.”
Pathogenic and Hivesmasher aren’t exactly tapping the same
veins, but this collaboration works, basically because both bands put
musicality ahead of genre.
“We won’t like a band just because it’s a grindcore band or
dislike a band just because it is not a grindcore band,” says Brault.
And besides, the dudes in Hivesmasher and Pathogenic are
buds going way back. Other guests on the record include Guy Kozowyk from The
Red Chord, Nate Johnson from Fit for an Autopsy, and Eric Taranto from
Dysentery.
Even though Hivesmasher crams a shitload of ideas into “Gutter
Choir” (spacey keyboards- check. bile-spewing cover of Foo Fighters’
“Everlong”- check), this record is oozing its goods rather than serving them up
all hermetically sealed.
“I have pretty strong opinions about producing a metal
album,” says Brault who co-produced this disc. “A lot of metal records_ and
heavy music in general_ is missing the energy that people are supposed to like
about it.”
Hivesmasher went for a “record it live” approach, and got in
shape by playing a lot of shows before heading into the studio. It paid off,
and now comes time to get back out on stage.
Hivesmasher is performing Wednesday, Nov. 21, at The Palladium
in Worcester, MA,
with headliners Gaza
plus Code Orange Kids, Full of Hell, Great American Ghost, The Navidson Record, and
Monoliths. The show starts at 6:30 p.m.
Hivesmasher then has its eye on a Dec. 20 show at Great Scott in Allston, MA, followed by
a January tour into Canada.
“What better time to head to Canada than middle of winter,
right?,” Brault posits.
Ah, but your music already gave you away as anything but
conventional. Looking forward to a Black Wednesday before Thanksgiving
Even though Megadeth has been touring steadily since the
release of “Thirteen” last November, it was easy to see why band founder and
leader Dave Mustaine didn’t want to pass up a chance to make the rounds one
more time with a full airing of “Countdown to Extinction” to commemorate that
album’s 20th anniversary. Not only is “Countdown” Megadeth’s most
commercially successful album to date, but also_ and more importantly_ it is as
resonant today as when it came out.
Mustaine caught shit during the election season for comments
made about the validity of Rick Santorum and the historical accuracy of 9/11
accounts. Sunday, Nov. 11, during Megadeth’s show at The Palladium in Worcester, Mustaine wasn’t going to be muzzled, blasting
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for not yet testifying before Congress about
the attacks on the U.S.
embassy in Libya.
Being an agitator is nothing new for Mustaine, “Countdown to
Extinction” being a prime case in point. He’s an equal-opportunity ranter, who points
out dire desperate deeds and other bullshit wherever he finds them. You still
hear that loudly on “Countdown,” especially on the title track, “Symphony of
Destruction” and “Foreclosure of a Dream."
Beyond its relevance, “Countdown to Extinction” is simply a
solid album from start to finish. The well-known songs come early, but that
closing shot of “Captive Honour” and “Ashes in Your Mouth” is as powerful as anything you'll find in the Megadeth catalog.
The current lineup of Megadeth with guitarist Chris
Broderick, drummer Shawn Drover, and founding members Mustaine and bassist Dave
Ellefson did the “Countdown” songs proud. Broderick_ who has been in the band
for four years_ teams well with Mustaine in trading licks and building towering
thrash harmonies. A lot goes on in the “Countdown” songs, from political and
social commentary to odes about skydiving and cyborgs. The music is as rangy as the themes. Megadeth 2012 nailed it
in proper celebratory style, meaning they played the songs like they still
enjoyed them, not like they were fulfilling a tour-poster promise.
Before Megadeth got to “Countdown,” it offered up a mix of
old and new material, starting with “Trust.” The intricacy of the production
blew away the band’s Gigantour show from January. Mind searing vids and lights
accompanied most numbers, which helped those occasional rough patches when
Mumblin’ Mustaine’s vocals just sunk into the sound mix.
Longtime favorite “Hangar 18” showed up early, followed by
“She-Wolf,’ a song that Megadeth keeps firm in the set list and actually holds
its own as a fierce live number. The smoky “A Tout le Monde” gave way to two
solid new songs, “Public Enemy #1” (whose monkey video offers the best chimp
action-film footage since Lance Link) and “Whose Life (is it Anyway?)” before
“Countdown” kicked off.
The non-“Countdown” sequence aptly set the stage, as the
band sounded tight but not overly prepped or too stiff to let the solos and
jams feel a little spontaneous.
After “Countdown,” Megadeth sealed the concert as a great one
with explosive versions of “Peace Sells,” which brought out mascot Vic Rattlehead to stalk the stage for a bit, and
“Holy Wars…Punishment Due,” final reminders that the old fights are still
dominating today’s news. Keep talking, Mustaine.
Kyng opened with a grungy bit of three-piece hard rock. The
band offered a decent stew of stoner, thrash and doom.
Why should jazz guys and jam bands get all the instrumental
glory? Kali Ma is fixing that. The Connecticut
quartet is pure metal, and recently captured its prog-meets-thrash ferocity on
a self-titled CD/DVD package.
Whether your framework for instrumental metal is Meshuggah’s
too-brief “Obsidian” or Metallica’s classic “Call of Ktulu,” Kali Ma pushes at
those boundaries with songs that are brutal and vivid.
Without needing to make room for a singer, guitarists Roy
Moore and Todd Whitlock are untamed, turning their progressive leads and riff
structures a little grimy and dirty. One of the best things about Kali Ma’s instro
approach is that the band doesn’t treat its metal as precious.
Bassist Jay Madore and drummer Shawn Cavanaugh keep things
dynamic as the guitarists bear down. The rhythm section navigates a course that
keeps the music is a state of tension between heavily down-tuned chug and
purely melodic thrash.
Aside from “Death March,” the tunes performed live for the
CD and DVD are simply numbered compositions_ not jams, but precisely arranged
tunes that coalesce around sonic themes. “XIV” is mournful; “XVIIII” veers into
a spacey interlude; and “XVIII” is pure ode to thrash.
“Death March” is featured all over the new package, becoming
something of the band’s signature anthem. It opens the series of live tracks
recorded at the Daniel Street Club. It is also part of the studio recordings making
up the second part of the CD. And the band worked with Edwin Escobar to create
a long-form video for the song that unspools on the DVD like a vintage slasher flick –
again no words, just music and visuals.
The concert footage on the DVD is likewise well shot and
brings the viewer right on stage to get a glimpse of these guys at work, not
to mention their effect on a metal audience. Definitely not the norm for a
metal show, but why be normal?
The Kali Ma CD/DVD package is available online through the
band’s Facebook page and you can catch Kali Ma live on these upcoming dates:
Nov. 16 at Bleachers in Bristol, CT; Nov. 21 at
Dewey's Pub in Seymour, CT
(This is a benefit show to help raise money for Hurricane Sandy victims); Nov. 24 at Cherry Street Station in Wallingford, CT; Dec. 1
at The Cave RVP Studios in West Haven, CT; and Dec.14 with Diecast at Dewey's
Pub in Seymour, CT.
What is more metal than a zombified King Tut monster that melts humans with a flame that shoots from his cock? Only maybe the zombie chick who melts Tut with the double-barrel flames she shoots from her boobs.
And that's how the "Metalocalypse: Dethklok" show started Sunday, Nov. 4 at the Palladium in Worcester, MA.
Dethklok is headbanging humor at its best because creator (and Berklee grad) Brendon Small is part of the tribe. He can brutally satirize metal fans and metal music the same way you can brutalize your brother; anybody outside the family making the joke is an asshole.
Guitar ace (and Zappa band alum) Mike Keneally, bassist Bryan Beller, and drummer Gene Hoglan join guitarist and singer Small to give the animated Dethklok its live sound, but even with those guys on stage there's no looking away from the accompanying animated vids, each a mini-epic (yes, there is such a thing) that devolves into people (or sea cretures) getting dismembered and/or torched.
It was all good fun through Dethklok's greatest hits ("Dethsupport," "Murmaider," "Thunderhorse" etc.) capped off by Small going "Sybil" and addressing the crowd in the voices of Dethklok's Nathan Explosion, Pickles, and Skwigsgaar Skwigelf, discussing how Dethklok was going to kick our women and fuck our dogs.
They got close enough.
Machine Head, All That Remains, and Black Dahlia Murder are the flesh and blood support on this tour.
Machine Head is at the top of its game and its extended workout on a version of "Halo" dedicated to Suicide Silence singer Mitch Lucker, who died Nov. 1 from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash, was the peak musical moment of the whole night.
Machine Head also relayed the news that Disney has once again banned the group from performing at its properties, earning Mickey a dedication of "Aesthetics of Hate."
All That Remains aired a couple of new songs from "A War You Cannot Win," which is out Tuesday, Nov. 6, though singer Phil Labonte had a hit-or-miss vocal delivery throughout the set.
Black Dahlia Murder is still the death band with a smirk.
All That Remains will deploy “A War You Cannot Win” on Tuesday,
Nov. 6, a likely non-coincidental Election Day missive.
Throughout “A War You Cannot Win,” singer Phil Labonte
sounds pissed off about both encroachments on his freedom and the general public's apathy
toward those infringements.“Take back
your freedom,” he rasps on “Sing for Liberty”;
“I won’t follow commands. I won’t meet your demands,” he declares on the title
track.
But “A War You Cannot Win” is not just a political album. In
a quickly paced 40-minute record, All That Remains touches on personal
relationships, philosophical musings, and broadly stated rants and chants. And
there are plenty of stylistic leaps to meet the variety of topics.
If anything, Springfield-bred All That Remains has developed
into metal’s mutt that can kick the ass of purebreds. Labonte handles the death growls and crooned
clean vocals, typically bringing them together in tunes. Lead guitar player
Oli Herbert provides the glue holding together a batch of songs that runs from the commercially
slick hard rock of “What If I Was Nothing” (which sounds like it fell off of a
Staind record) to the bile-splattered thrash of “You Can’t Fill My Shadow.”
Herbert and Labonte are the quintet’s remaining original
members. Neither the guitarist nor the singer performs like he
is satisfied taking All That Remains down one particular road, so they manage to lead All That Remaions all over the place and still hold together the group's identity. The band’s original
metalcore blueprint was way too sparse for Herbert’s guitar style, which takes in
the grandeur of power metal and explosiveness of modern metal. Likewise, Labonte
is too charismatic to just hunker down in a metal bunker mentality and be on
constant attack mode.
Drummer Jason Costa, singer Phil Labonte, guitarist Oli Herbert, bassist Jeanne Sagan, and guitarist Mike Martin
It’s good hearing a band take risks, and here it’s clear
that All That Remains can alienate the metal fans with songs that are too clean
and smooth as well as shove away the more mainstream rock fans with songs that evolve
into spastic displays of jarring vocals and punishing rhythm work.Some may argue that “A War You Cannot Win”
bows to commercial tastes, but if that were the case it would not nearly be as
diverse as it is. Rather, this is a band ignoring expectations, and doesn’t
topple for it.
There’s little chance that every song will appeal to every
listener_ I can do without the “don’t worry baby, it’ll be all right” shit_ but
All That Remains doesn’t linger on any one point for very long, and at the very
least you can appreciate the raw talent at work in the band.
All That Remains will be playing Sunday, Nov. 4 at the Palladium
in Worcester, MA. Metalocalypse’s Dethklok headlines and
Machine Head is also on the bill. Show time is 7 P.M.
Blue Oyster Cult performing acoustic version of "In Thee"
Blue Oyster Cult kicked off a run of 40th anniversary dates
Thursday, Oct. 25, at Showcase Live in Foxboro with a two-hour show that
underscored the band's ongoing vitality with welcome song revivals and a couple of freshly worked up acoustic numbers.
The night began on a questionable note when the band shut
down pre-approved photogs just before show time, raising questions about the
group’s condition (and hence leading to us using the same sort of iPhone pics
everyone else was taking versus quality shots).
Blue Oyster Cult opened with its standard starter “The Red
and the Black” but showed no signs of rust or hesitancy. New bassist Kasim
Sulton fit right in, and Richie Castellano gave the keys a rest to play guitar
alongside Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma. The triple-guitar attack carried into
“The Golden Age of Leather”
Eric Bloom and Jules Radino
Dharma fleshed out the tunes with long, lyrical solos and
took his best vocal turn of the night on “Burnin’ for You.” Bloom took back the
microphone for “Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll,” though Dharma stepped into
the spotlight on that song with a feedback-fuzzed solo.
Bloom moved to the keyboards and Castellano to guitar for a
segment where the audience got to choose between “Shooting Shark” and “Harvest
Moon,” with the former getting the nod. Then Bloom waved the band off of the set
list to see what would happen during a run through “The Vigil”; pleased with
the results, Bloom said, “See what happens when you practice.”
At that point the band was not only well-rehearsed but also
red hot and tore though the WWII tale “M.E. 262.” B.O.C. swerved into longer,
spacier grooves with “Then Came the Last Days of May,” a showpiece for Dharma,
though Castellano earned a standing ovation after delivering the first of the
song’s epic guitar solos (and, yeah, Buck got the people on their feet too).
Bloom made the bad decision to talk up the New York Giants
while standing in Patriots Place,
then joked that he’d lighten the mood by turning the discussion over to a
debate on Romney versus Obama. All was forgiven when he simply took up the mic
and delivered the twisted horror rock of “Lips in the Hills."
The band then moved into the standard closing sequence of
“Godzilla” and “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.” “Godzilla” still has a bass feature
medley which has been adapted for Sulton, highlighting his resume with musical
snippets of Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’Roll,” Todd Rundgren’s “Bang the Drum All Day,” “and Meat Loaf’s
“Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.” After crafting a solo of his own, Sulton
passed the baton to drummer Jules Radino whose solo nicely set up the closing
“Godzilla” jam. Then things quieted to a Dharma interlude that built into the
familiar strains of “Reaper,” which the band dedicated to Bill Graham, who died
in a helicopter crash on Oct. 25, 1991.
For its encore, B.O.C. gave the crowd a sample of an
upcoming acoustic show it has planned ahead of two NYC dates. First it was a
revival of “In Thee,” Allen Lanier’s lonesome ballad, stripped here to its
essentials. The band then added full drums and keys to “Astronomy” though Bloom and
Dharma stayed on acoustic guitars and drafted a moody, slow-burn version of the
song.
While “Astronomy” was the night’s boldest performance, BOC
seemed to want to go out on a louder kick, so the band turned over the
microphone to Castellano and let him lead the charge through a raucous “Hot Rails
to Hell.”
At 40, Blue Oyster Cult is still quite capable of moving
through its myriad musical mutations without sounding like it is simply going
through the motions.
.JPG)
