Archive | Events
We’re about ten months away from next year’s 70,000 Tons Of Metal Cruise setting sail. Yet within the past week, we’ve already learned about a few big names confirmed for the metal cruise festival.
On Easter, it was revealed that Dark Tranquillity, Death Angel, Overkill and Soilwork were slated to play 70,000 Tons Of Metal Cruise 2014. Since then, bands like Fear Factory, Symphony X, D.R.I., Finntroll, and Septicflesh were also confirmed for the cruise. If that wasn’t enough, it was also announced that Fear Factory will be performing their 1995 album Demanufacture on board.
There is still another 31 bands left to be announced, yet this cruise’s lineup is already looking pretty damn killer. More bands will be announced leading up to the cruise, while booking for next year’s edition (which will mark its time aboard the Majesty Of The Seas ship) is open to the public online starting today at 5pm EST.
Didn’t get a chance to see Motley Crue’s Las Vegas residency last year? Well the group is giving fans a second chance, as they’ll be returning to The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino for another residency.
This particular twelve show engagement will take place from September 18 through October 6, with tickets going on sale this Friday (April 5) at 10 am. Nikki Sixx had the following to say about Motley Crue’s second residency:
“We are proud to have pioneered the Las Vegas rock residency last year and can’t wait to come back this year to take it over the top with a brand new show that will be unlike anything you’ve ever seen Motley Crue do before.”
Paul Davis, VP of entertainment at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, had the following to add:
“The guys had such a wild and successful run the first time around, I’m sure they will want to do everything bigger and better this time. We are extremely excited to see what the band brings to The Joint and Vegas during their second residency.”
Motley Crue certainly started a trend in Vegas among 80’s hard rock groups, with bands like Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard having since done their own residencies at The Joint. And considering that Motley Crue could be planning to call it quits for good soon, this might be fans last chance to see the group in Vegas.
Check out a complete rundown of dates for Motley Crue’s second Las Vegas residency (as well as a video highlighting last year’s residency) below. Read more »
Robert Meadows, king of Austin
6. Howl
MetalSucks presents South By South Death at the Dirty Dog
Prior to this performance I was only casually acquainted with the band’s fifth full length Full of Hell, which is quite solid. Since then, Vincent Hausman dropped the guitar to focus fully on vocals which seems to have been beneficial for the band. his performance was great and songs new and old we executed with unbelievable intensity.
The band’s new album, Bloodlines, drops April 30th via Relapse
5. The Beards
Midgetmen’s Jumpstart at The Side Bar & The Australian Music Showcase at BD Riley’s Pub
If you are unfamiliar with The Beards you are missing out. However, if you yourself do not have a beard or are a lady with an undying appreciation for them, kindly ignore this recommendation until you have a beard (this includes ladies). They are a quartet of bearded men from Australia that managed to put out three full-length concept albums all about the joys, trials, and triumphs of having a beard. Their sets were intimate for those who were bearded (i.e. they’d stroke your beard, you’d stroke theirs, beard on beard rubs, etc) and hilarious both in song and in-between.
The band is currently backing their self-released third album Having A Beard Is The New Not Having A Beard.
4. Junius
Metal Wreckage Showcase at the Sixth Lounge Rooftop
I’ve adored this band for quite some time and have managed to not see them on every trek they’ve made through my local venues, so I was very excited for this one. The band played a flawless half hour of their amazing ambient dark metal/hard rock that presented many tracks from their recent album Reports From The Threshold Of Death. In person the band is heavy on a level that I’ve only encountered seen one other time. That band was Gojira.
The band is currently backing their second LP Reports From The Threshold Of Death via Prosthetic Records
3. Royal Thunder
Pitchfork’s Show No Mercy Showcase at The Mohawk, MetalSucks presents South By South Death at the Dirty Dog, and The Converse/Thrasher Death Match at The Scoot Inn
I haven’t been able to stop listening to Royal Thunder’s CVI since I left Texas. As I type this “Shake and Shift” is pouring through my speakers and Mlny Parsonz’s voice is trying to tear my focus away from this entry. The aforementioned CVI was one of my favorite records of 2012 and my expectations were high for seeing them live. They did not disappoint, so much so that I tried to see them four days in a row. I succeeded only thrice because I made the mistake of leaving the venue to get food before they went on and was denied re-entry upon my return. Anyway, Parsonz is phenomenal live the rest of the band managed to capture your attention with their abilities. I’d see them again tomorrow if I could.
Royal Thunder released CVI in 2012 on Relapse
2. Clutch
The 11oo Warehouse and The Converse/Thrasher Death Match at The Scoot Inn
Clutch barely made it on this list before Royal Thunder. Royal Thunder was just as good but Clutch are one of my favorite bands of all time. Their setlists both days were perfectly balanced between material from the new album, Earth Rocker, and classics like “The Profits of Doom,” “Texan Book of the Dead” and “Gravel Road.” These shows at SXSW were my fourth and fifth time experiencing the glory of Clutch live, and only managed to get me excited for when they play San Francisco next week.
Clutch’s new album, Earth Rocker, is out today via WeatherMaker Music
1. A Life Once Lost
Metal Wreckage Showcase at the Sixth Lounge Rooftop
Before this performance was even two songs in, I text my friend, “Dude, A Life Once Lost got awesome!” I first saw A Life Once Lost in 2006 at Ozzfest, and when I did I saw a completely different band. Since then the band took a completely different direction to both their music and their stage presence. Douglas Sabolick’s guitar work would be so easy to get lost in if it weren’t for vocalist Robert Meadows being such a fantastic madman of a front man. Meadows was was all over the place. He shared the mic with fans during the band’s closing number, even having a fan join him on stage (by force), he stood on Jordan Crouse’s bass drum and hung from what little cover the awning provided, and this served as foreshadowing as Meadows later scaled that awning and stood over half of the audience and screamed from atop Austin. In short, the man (and the band overall) put on a hell of a show!
The band’s latest album Ecstatic Trance is out now via Season of Mist
Every Band I Saw
Encrust
Anamanauchi
The Circle
Colourmusic
Pallbearer
Royal Thunder x 3
A Life Once Lost
Junius
Power Trip x 2
The beards x 2
Countless Thousands
Howl
Gypsyhawk
KEN Mode
Baptists
The Kickback
Lionize
Murder By Death
Clutch x 2
Hatred Surge
Freedom Hawk
Kadaver
Ancient VVisdom
Orange Goblin
and countless other bands that mumbled their names
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Next Saturday (23), GreinerKilmer Customs, a drum company owned by August Burns Red drummer Matt Greiner and his partner Kaleb Kilmer, will be hosting Drum Day at the School of Rock in Fort Washington, PA. With them, they are bringing drummers Adam Gray of Texas in July and Grant McFarland (ex-This or The Apocalypse). The day will feature clinics performed by all of the drummers, a drum solo contest for those in attendance, a tuning seminar by drum tech Mason Hunt, a performance by School of Rock students and Lancaster, PA band Bells, and a four-man drum solo featuring all of the drummers and one of Greiner’s ten-year old students.
Metal Insider contributor Alex Rudisill got the chance to speak with Greiner and Kilmer about how the event came to be.
GreinerKilmer was founded in the summer of 2011 after both Matt Greiner and Kaleb Kilmer had discussed the possibility of starting their own drum company. “I showed him a photo of a drum I had built out of broken drumsticks,” Kaleb said. “It was the first I’d built and he suggested we start building drums together!” While Matt was playing on the VANS Warped Tour, Kaleb stayed home to perfect the design of their now-signature snare drum. They built 20 snares that summer and have continued to thrive, shipping their instruments all around the world.
“We started planning Drum Day last November and have been working ever since,” says Greiner. “Seeing as it’s our first year doing the conference, I wanted to include friends who are super talented and very inspirational to so many people.”
Kilmer explained, “We picked Adam and Grant because they’re friends of ours, and they’re great musicians. Adam knows so much about drumming and groove, and Grant knows so much about recording and writing we figured the two of them, in addition to Matt, would be a great team of judges and hosts at the event.” McFarland is also the co-owner of Atrium Audio in Lancaster, PA, who’s clients include August Burns Red, Texas in July, and This or The Apocalypse.
During one of his lessons with Matt, ten-year old Travis Harwick was asked to participate in the four-man drum solo happening at Drum Day with Greiner, Gray, and McFarland. “We get together as often as we can in between him touring,” said Travis, who also attends the School of Rock in Fort Washington. “We work on linear beats, double bass beats and a lot of really cool stuff and what Matt calls ‘Greiner’s Grinds.’” On getting to rehearse with all of the drummers last week, Travis said, “It was a total blast! We were writing the solo and spent some time learning some cool tips from everyone.”
“We just want to get drummers from the area together and have a good time talking drums and music!” says Kilmer. “To build the local drum scene and inspire drummers to dream bigger,” adds Greiner.
Tickets are $20 for spectators and $30 if you wish to compete in the drum competition, with the grand prize of a GK signature snare. They can be purchased here.
For more information on the event, check out the GreinerKilmer website, the official event page, and this video of Adam Gray.
Wish you were at SXSW? If you’re one of the very few that said “no”, you’ll change your mind when you realize who’s playing the Vans/Pitchfork Showcase. It’s been happening since 12pm and headliner Skeletonwitch should be enough to get you excited, not to mention Pallbearer, Royal Thunder. and many others. Thankfully for those who aren’t in Austin, TX right now, Vans is streaming the entire showcase online now.
You can stream the show live (currently in progress) at Van’s official website for your viewing pleasure. We’ve also got the full schedule for other metal happenings at SXSW for today and the rest of the week.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock since last summer, we don’t need to tell you about Baroness’ long road to recovery since their bus accident. However, it looks like that long road is about to get a little shorter with the news of Baroness Relief, a benefit auction set up by friends up the band. The purpose of the auction is to help pay the medical bills resulting from the band’s accident.
Bands such as Meshuggah, Mastodon, Napalm Death, Kylesa, Neurosis, Municipal Waste, Red Fang, and more have donated everything from signed posters to instruments. Some of the more exciting items include Brann Dailor’s snare drum that he used during the recording of Leviathan, a Municipal Waste garbage pack, and a beer holster donated by Red Fang (which may or may not be the most bitchin’ item so far). The items will be put up on eBay in about 1-3 weeks.
So, if you’re in need of something cool from your favorite band and you want your money to go to a good cause, this is for you. Now, excuse me while I set up an eBay account exclusively for that beer holster.
Last year around this time, the internet was abuzz with the sound of bitching from elitists and metalheads alike as Metallica lifted the veil on the lineup to their inaugural Orion Music and More festival. “Not metal enough,” most metal fans said upon seeing a lineup that included Modest Mouse, the Arctic Monkeys and Eric Church. “Too many metal bands,” said the indie rockers that had to buy a ticket to the festival to see The Gaslight Anthem, Cage the Elephant and Titus Andronicus. At the end of the day, more metal bands were announced, the festival was run amazingly well, and anyone that ventured to Atlantic City had a great time.
Yet on Monday (25), another round of bitching will likely begin anew, as that’s when Metallica will announce who’s playing this year’s festival, set to take place in Detroit on June 8th and 9th. By now, the shock of a festival that features indie rock, comedy, and metal alike presented by Metallica has likely worn off, but the internet being the internet, people will still find a reason to bitch about the lineup. We’ll keep an open mind – if we’re going to complain about anything, it’s that the festival is in Detroit this year. Of course we’ll bring you the lineup as soon as it’s announced, but you can also find out via Metallica’s website, Facebook, Twitter, and whatever other social media they’re on – probably even Pinterest.
When we saw the first NYC screening of Sound City, a rep from Variance Films (who was on hand to introduce the film) joked how disappointed we likely were that Dave Grohl wasn’t there. In fact, Grohl was in L.A. for both a separate screening and for a show with his “Sound City Players,” who made their live debut at the Sundance Film Fest in Utah. However, now Grohl is giving fans in NYC a chance to seem his all-star group live.
Grohl and the “Sound City Players” will be performing at the Hammerstein Ballroom on February 13. Expected to appear at the show will be Stevie Nicks, John Fogerty, Rick Springfield, Cheap Trick’s Rick Nielsen, Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk, and Grohl’s bandmates in Nirvana and Foo Fighters, among others. Not only do all of these musicians appear in the film and soundtrack, but have also taken part in the “Sound City Players’” shows in L.A. and at Sundance.
Tickets go on sale this Tuesday, February 5, via Ticketmaster. And while a single ticket will cost $87.50 ($103.50 after “convenient” charges), this might be the only chance for fans in the Tri-State area to see Grohl and his supergroup onstage.
Following the arrest of Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe last year, and the subsequent cancellation of the band’s tour with Dethklok, it was unclear how long it would be until the tour’s opener, Gojira, would return to North America on such a full scale tour. It was a pleasant surprise to find Gojira casting the opener role aside for a headline run with the Devin Townsend Project and Chicago psych-doom metalers The Atlas Moth. The tour had two Northern California dates and I attended both. The first was on January 23 at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco and the second on the 24th at Sacramento’s Ace of Spades.
I arrived to both shows early to find a sparsely populated room for The Atlas Moth. All of those who skipped out on them miss a solid set of material from the band’s latest gem An Ache for the Distance like “Coffin Varnish” and the epic, set-ending title track. The band manages to find the perfect blend of sludgy lurching guitar-driven metal with the right amount of emotion which I was happy to find translated quite well from album to stage. While the band seemed plagued with sound issues during their Sacramento set, this one felt like the better sounding performance even though they could barely fit the band on the tiny Ace of Spades stage.
In an semi-unrelated moment of praise, Atlas Moth guitarist/vocalist David Kush is a awesome guy. Following the band’s Sacramento set, I grabbed a copy of the new album on vinyl and later found Kush near the merch table. I asked him to sign it, and he instead grabbed it and took off to find the rest of the band to sign it as well. He is clearly a musician who appreciates the fans, and I want to extend a thank you. Cool guys or not see this band live and grab An Ache for the Distance.
Next up was the band I came to see, and the main reason I decided to be one of THOSE fans and go two days in a row, The Devin Townsend Project. Both nights featured sets that were, not surprisingly, heavy on the latest album, Epicloud, which was not at all a problem to me. I fucking loved Epicloud. What was a surprise was the complete omission of anything from Addicted, but perhaps Dev felt that a Gojira crowd could only handle so much epic pop-ish metal, so he instead dropped in the prog madness of “Planet of the Apes” from Deconstruction and the oldie-but-goodie “War” from Infinity. This seemed like a fair trade to me. Townsend’s stage banter was hilarious as always as he dropped in a “Banana Phone” reference at the Sacramento show and repeatedly called out one larger gentlemen at the San Francisco show who refused to do jazz hands. And nothing will top Devin asking the crowd, “Are you ready for some death metal?!…I’m not!” before instead choosing to lead the crowd in arm waving. Read more »
I would have posted about this earlier in the week, but I was too busy trying to pick my jaw up off the floor while slowly regaining my hearing. Anyway, there were a few things I was expecting on the evening of Decibel’s 100th Issue Celebration Show, including beer and awesome performances. I was particularly excited since the show was my first time seeing any of the bands on the bill, namely Pig Destroyer and Converge. What I was not expecting were the many announcements and surprise special guests for that evening.
Tombs was just getting on stage by the time I got there and were putting on a good show, but after their set one of the first exciting incidents of the night occured. After they finished, none other than Tomas Lindberg of At The Gates walked on stage and announced the lineup for the Decibel Magazine Tour 2013. Needless to say, the crowd got pretty excited. Actually, they were kind of ecstatic, as was I.
Next up was Municipal Waste and I’ll tell you right now that if you have never seen this band before, then you need to get yourself to the Metal Alliance Tour. The circle pit was pretty much instantaneous and the venue was just a straight up party during Municipal Waste’s set. Tony Foresta was in absolute top form, and funny as shit to boot. Without a doubt, the highlight was when Tomas Lindberg came back on stage and played a cover of “United Forces” by Stormtroopers of Death. Get that right: Municipal Waste and Tomas Lindberg covered STORMTROOPERS OF DEATH. Holy hell.
I’m not all that familiar with Repulsion and from the looks of the crowd it seemed like I wasn’t alone. Actually, it was the band’s first time playing in Philly. Their frontman/bassist Scott Carlson had some cool bass tones going on and they offered up some solid death metal. That said, some of the crowd’s initial reaction to the band was along the lines of “Who is this and why are they on after Municipal Waste?” I think that by the end of the end set, people were digging them.
It’s safe to say that many people were at the show to see Pig Destroyer, and with good reason. I don’t know if it was just me, but the set started off sounding odd. It got better over time though. The band plowed through their set complete with various sound bites. Plus, the band played two songs live for the first time: “Book Burner” and “The Diplomat”. Considering the band’s latest release was among the best albums from 2012, it was an absolute treat to hear their new material.
Finally Converge took the stage, but before they began, John Baizley of Baroness surprised everyone with an appearence and then delivered a moving speech concerning the band’s horrific bus accident and his feelings on Converge’s All We Love We Leave Behind. Here’s an excerpt:
I think it was about three-and-a-half weeks after the crash, I had the new Converge record and I was like, ‘Well, Emmylou is not doing it for me, let’s try the opposite.’ And that record brought me back into the fold. Thank you for writing music that truly inspires, and I mean this when I say this, that truly rehabilitates, not just offers me a release from aggressions or from bullshit, but something that helps me look forward to tomorrow when today is as tough as it gets.
With that, Converge plunged into their set. Now, let me make it known that people were stage diving (or flipping) most of the night. But Converge was the only band that night that had about 10+ people onstage ready to leap off at one time. I can say without a doubt that Converge are the most batshit crazy band that I have ever seen live. I swear Jacob Bannon was possessed or something. They even pulled out “Locust Reign” for the first time in years. Of course, the most memorable part of the night was when John Baizley came onstage again to play “Coral Blue” with the band.
To say that my expectations were exceeded would be an understatement of an understatement (if that makes any sense). Suffice it to say that, unless you were also at the show, my night was better than yours. Thankfully for those not in attendance, photographer Maclyn Bean was at the show and took some great shots of the entire evening. Check out a few of his photos from each set after the jump. Read more »
We’re about ten months away from next year’s 70,000 Tons Of Metal Cruise setting sail. Yet within the past week, we’ve already learned about a few big names confirmed for the metal cruise festival.
Posted by Zach Shaw on Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 11:07 am
Events