Video: If You Have No Lungs To Breathe, You’ll Lay Dying

As most bands are doing these days, As I Lay Dying have released a lyric video. “No Lungs To Breathe” is taken from last year’s Awakened, and is out just as the band’s tour with The Devil Wears Prada is underway. Other bands on the tour include For Today, The Color Morale and The Chariot. Check out the video above and the dates after the jump.  Read more »

Today Is The Day Streaming New Single

You can hear “Sick of Your Mouth,” a new song from Today is the Day, online via Noisey. It’s a standalone track, as their next album won’t be recorded until later this year.

Oderus Promises That GWAR Will Play Three New Songs On Tour

It’s been known that GWAR has been working on a new album, the first to feature new scumdog Pustulus Maximus. And while a release date nor title has still not been set in stone, Oderus Urungus confirms that fans will get to hear GWAR play not one, but THREE new songs during the Fate Of Chaos Tour with Warbeast and Wilson.

Oderus revealed the news, as well as the actual song titles, via the following tweet:

“This upcoming tour we will be playing THREE brand new songs! ‘Madness at the Core of Time,’ ‘They Swallowed the Sun,’ and ‘Bloodbath’…”

As one fan’s retweet says, we’re surprised that GWAR hasn’t already had a song called “Bloodbath.” The Fate Of Chaos Tour kicks off in April, while Oderus himself told us that they hope to have the new album out by the end of Summer. Check out tour dates after the jump. Read more »

Bring Me The Horizon Push Up Release Date; Stream New Album Now

If you’re a band and your album leaks, what do you do? If you’re Bring me the Horizon, you push the album’s release up a month,stream it for free for a week, and then have your singer release a statement about how “phenomenal demand” is the reason you’re releasing it early. That’s what happened today, with Oli Sykes making the following statement after Sempiternal’s release date was moved to April 2 from April 30:

“Due to overwhelming and phenomenal demand, Sempiternal will be with you sooner than you thought, we are glad you have heard and & love it and all we can ask is if you enjoy this album you’ll help the band continue to make records and buy it when it’s released officially.”

It’s probably a good move on the band/label/management’s part to stream the album for a week. Not that it will necessarily stop those that have already downloaded the album from spreading it, but most fans will listen legally for a week, then hold out for another month, as opposed to succumbing to illegally obtaining the album after knowing other people have a two month headstart on listening to it. You can pre-order the album here, and listen to it via YouTube after the jump. Or, ya know, if you’re a rebel, you can probably find it online somewhere. Read more »

Dissident Aggression: Vreid Bring The Darkness

“Metal” is a word than can be applied to a very broad array of music.  We as a musical community have spent the last 30+ years slicing and dicing bands up into genres and sub-genres and even sub-sub-genres.  This sort of categorization, both mentally and in print, sometimes leads us to be pleasantly surprised any time a band successfully blends sounds from across genres.  One such band that has made a living off of making their sound as indescribable as possible is Norway’s Vreid.

Mixing elements of black metal, thrash, traditional metal and good old fashioned rock n’ roll, Vreid create a sound that almost always defies succinct one or two word genre-based descriptions.  Their new album, Welcome Farewell, is no exception.  If you removed the vocals completely from this album you might not consider it a black metal album at all.  The riffs and the song structures themselves borrow more from the early days of metal (specifically the brief few years when metal was simply “metal”) than from the corpsepaint wearing purveyors of black metal.   The album is still black metal in spirit if nothing else though and those raspy, demonic vocals alone link it back to the genre.  But it also gives off a certain aura of grimness that just reeks of black metal.  Not to mention that tracks like “The Ramble” and “Way of the Serpent”  have more in common with artists like Immortal and Satyricon than anyone else.  The latter track especially, with it’s blast beat opening.

But as the album progresses so too grows the inclusion of more and more elements dragged from their darkened corners of the metal landscape.   Honestly, there are just as many, if not more, parts of this album that share common ground with a litany of artists not directly connected with black metal as it does black metal itself.  By album’s end you’ll have heard as much Mercyful Fate or Possessed influence as you would anything else.  Regardless of what you want to call it the one thing you can call this album is kick ass.  It’s a cold, dark record that perfectly embodies the loneliness and harshness of the thematic life cycle held within the lyrics.  Welcome Farewell sees it’s official release here in the States on March 5 on Indie Recordings.

 

Metal Homework:
I’m going to open this up to you guys to give me some homework.  In the comments field below throw out some bands from your local scene you think deserve more attention!  The one caveat – make sure they are an active band and preferably have released original music in the last year.  Go!

 

Join The ‘Road Crew’ And Help Promote Roadrunner Releases

While it definitely went through some growing pains last year, Roadrunner Records appears to be going through a renaissance. Not only are they signing bands like Kvelertak and The Devil Wears Prada, they’ve also resuscitated their long-dormant street team, “Road Crew.” Starting with the recent Gojira and Stone Sour tours, the Road Crew has been helping the label promote their tour dates and current releases nationwide.

Interested in joining the Road Crew? The label is now seeking some quality reps. You’ll get tickets to shows and get to work with bands on Roadrunner’s roster, which include Heartist, Rush, Trivium, Killswitch Engage and others. The label’s looking for reps nationwide, so you don’t have to be at the epicenter of the music industry to get involved. If you want to be involved in the music industry, the Road Crew could be a solid way to start. Head over to roadrunnerroadcrew.com for more info and to enlist.

Pandora To Limit Free Mobile Listening

Popular online internet radio destination Pandora announced yesterday that they’ll be placing a cap on free unlimited listening to the service. As of this week, listeners will be limited to 40 hours per month of free listening on Pandora. After the limit is reached, listeners will have the option to pay 99 cents to listen for the remainder of the month or subscribe to Pandora One, which costs $36/year.

In a note on the company blog, Pandora founder and Chief Strategy Officer Tim Westergren explained that only 4% of their active users hit the 40 hour mark, and the reason they’re capping listening is that the royalty rates they’re currently paying are continuing to increase. It all makes sense, and active listeners that use the service daily probably won’t object to paying a bit for the service, if they aren’t already. And while the more casual listeners probably will never hit that mark anyway, there are probably some that are tuning out now just on principle. Westergren’s blog post is after the jump. Read more »

Finally, AC/DC Have Their Own Beer

When you think about it, if any band have earned the right to their own beer, it’s AC/DC. Their fans range in age from nowhere near old enough to drink to decrepit, even soccer moms know the chorus to “You Shook Me All Night Long” and most of their music sounds like it was written for the sole purpose of being played in arenas at sporting events. On the other hand, their second vocalist Bon Scott did pass away from alcohol poisoning. Regardless, the Australian band have gotten their own line of beer in Germany, and it’s spreading beyond Europe.

The beer is a relatively mild (for Germany) 5% alcohol by volume and comes in a 16 oz. can and a 5 liter mini-keg, not unlike Heineken. According to their website, the beer “ignites on the tongue like a ton of TNT,” which sounds unsafe to say the least. Like most awesome alcohol/rock tie ins, the product is not available in the United States. It is available in Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary though. It’s also coming to Romania, Russia and Brazil soon. Which basically means everywhere but here.

[via 96.5thefox]

Win Tickets To Kvelertak’s Tour With Cancer Bats And Black Tusk

Roadrunner Records is giving away a pair of tickets to each show of Kvelertak’s upcoming tour with Cancer Bats and Black Tusk. Enter for the chance to win online.

Big Brother’s Adam Poch Recaps Survivor 26 – Week 3

Big Brother 13 2nd runner-up Adam Poch is recapping Survivor Caramoan – Fans vs. Favorites for us, focusing on Matt “the Beard” Bischoff – BMX salesman & lead singer of the metal band Moonbow.

Welcome to my weekly Survivor 26 Caramoan Fans vs. Favorites recap. I will be focusing on Matt “the Beard” Bischoff – BMX salesman & lead singer of the metal band Moonbow. When we last left our Ginger Metal Warrior, he had just “picked a side” and voted out Allie from the Cool Kids Table (CKT) instead of hothead Shamar.
The episode opened with the fans returning to camp after voting out their first member. It should be a nice quiet evening right? WRONG – fireworks broke out right away and of course in the middle of it all was Shamar. He got into it with anyone who tried to talk to him, even went off on Matt. Umm, hey Shamar, you do realize that Matt was the reason you stayed right? Matt could have easily gone over and voted with the CKT alliance forcing a 5-5 vote and who knows what could have happened next. Matt was trying to explain himself to Shamar about some of the things brought up at tribal council, but Shamar wouldn’t even let him finish a thought. Trust me, I know how frustrating it is trying to be rational with someone who is irrational. It just drives you crazy – while they are already crazy. You are not going to get your point across, so stop trying.

 

Back at the Fans camp the next day – Shamar realized he was not happy with the way he has been behaving – and told the tribe how he had a hard time dealing with the world once he got back from his first tour of duty in Iraq. He contemplates quitting the game, but Sherri, the “tribe mom” convinces him to stick around at least until after the Immunity Challenge. She feels they need him in the challenge, and if he quits now, and the tribe loses, then they will be down 2 people. This early in the game, you need as many people in your tribe & especially strong physical players (foreshadowing!) to win the challenges vs. the other tribe.

 

Let’s move right to the Immunity Challenge. This week, the whole tribe had to swim out to a cage in the middle of the water and release an opening at the bottom – where they had to get a trunk out and swim it back to shore. Once there, they had to get it onto a track and slide it to the end. BUT – parts of the track were slid forward, so they had to use a rope with a ring attached to it to grab each segment and pull it into the gap so they can slide the trunk along. Read more »