A little over a year ago, at Metal Insider/Mayhem Festival’s CMJ showcase (from back when we were BITPOM), brand new Roadrunner Records signing Mutiny Within played one of their first shows as a signed band. The New Jersey band (Jersey represent!!!) were solid then, but have come remarkably far in the year since. We saw them play once about three months ago, then once again about two weeks ago, and they’ve improved notably each time. Their sound is equal parts prog, power metal and new school metal. To draw a parallel to other bands on their label, imagine a jam session between Dream Theater and Killswitch Engage. Their album isn’t coming out until 2010, but now you can find out for yourself how they sound, since today only, Roadrunner is giving music fans a chance to download album opener ”Awake” for free. Go here to download it.
What do The Devil Wears Prada, Underoath and Shadows Fall have in common? They were all past recipients of free food and exposure from Taco Bell as part of their Feed The Beat program. In conjunction with the 2009 Video Music Awards, Taco Bell has launched this year’s search for 100 pop, indie and metal bands. All bands selected will receive a one month’s supply of Fourthmeal (otherwise known as $500 in Taco Bell Bucks).
Between now and Wednesday, September 30, interested bands can go to www.feedthebeat.com/feedthebeatsignup for details on how to enter and contest rules. As long as your band is touring this fall, has a dedicated fan base, and a band or MySpace Web site, they’re eligible. This year’s bands will be announced on October 21 via Twitter, Facebook and www.feedthebeat.com.
If you’re a touring band, especially one on an indie label, you’ll take all the tour support you can get, and since the Bell even has veggie options, this is a win-win for any band that’s selected.
Want to hear some black metal? Of course you do. Check out “Ghost of a Thousand Broken Blades,” from Metal Blade’s newest signing, Lightning Swords of Death.
The Los Angeles band will be playing New York City on Monday August 17 at Precious Metal night at Lit Lounge. “Ghost of a Thousand Blades” is taken from the band’s first CD, The Golden Plague, which is available here. Look for a new album from them in 2010.
Job board Music-Jobs.com is giving out free one-month subscriptions (a $10 value) to any bloggers willing to give the site a try and hook up the ol’ plug. Not a bad deal for those of you who are looking for a job and waste all your time blogging. But you have to blog to get the free service to get the job. That’s a dillema. From the release:
If you are a registered US Music Jobs member and you have a personal blog, this will be quite easy for you. Simply write in your blog about Music Jobs and include a link to our site. A couple of possible blog post ideas include how US Music Jobs has helped you in your job hunt, an informative wiki-like profile of our site, or you can write a review about US Music Jobs.
If you don’t have a blog yet, there are plenty of free blog providers that you can join, including Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, LiveJournal, and many more.
Have a website, but no blog? No problem! Just write about us on one of your pages, refer people back to us, and link back to our site.
You can link to the Music Jobs Homepage, but it may be more useful for your readers if you linked to the jobs board page at . But, if you feel we have a page on our site more relevant to your readers, feel free to link back to that page instead (ie, the “About Us page”). Just note that a link must be present for you to qualify.
Once you have your blog post up, send us the following to usmj_promo@music-jobs.com
1. Your name and US Music Jobs username (this should be your email address)
2. Your website or blog’s URL with the posting about Music Jobs (make sure there is a link back to us.music-jobs.com in the post)
It’s as simple as that! After your submission, you should get a confirmation email letting you know that your free month is set up.
This promotion will last from today, August 6, 2009 until September 6, 2009. Members who qualify for the free one month’s subscription will be contacted by email.
Now this begs the question, did I plug the promotion to get my own free account? No, because I’m not allowed within 100 feet of office buildings anymore. Or is that middle schools?
Those of you making the rounds at Mayhem Festival this year may have noticed our friends at Revolver giving away a free limited mini edition of their magazine featuring Job For A Cowboy on the cover.
We here at the Insider felt that just wasn’t enough, and we’re teaming with up with Revolver and Red Music to give you an exclusive 21 track compilation, available for download right now! The compilation features JFAC as well as Darkest Hour, Baroness and Dying Fetus. Did we mention free? What are you waiting for? Head on over and download it now!
Alice In Chains has posted a download for “A Looking In View,” a new song from their long-awaited album Black Gives Way To Blue. On first listen, we’re very impressed. The vocals sound almost exactly the same as they did before. That’s not a slag against new vocalist William DuVall, either. Jerry Cantrell was behind half of the vocals before, so the fifth harmony dynamic they had is intact. The song itself is long, slow and heavy, and honestly, as good as anything we could have expected. Black Gives Way To Blue will be out in September. Let us know what you think of it!
Vice Records, the people behind Heavy Metal in Baghdad and the great magazine, have signed a new band. Lullabye Arkestra is a two piece power duo – think Big Business meets the White Stripes. The band’s sophomore album, Threats/Worship, will be released on September 1. The husband-wife duo of Kat Taylor-Small and Justin Small have toured with the likes of Bison B.C., Blood Ceremony and Fucked Up. While it’ll be over two months until the album is released, here’s an early taste of it – a tender love song called “We Fuck The Night.” Check it out here.
Today only, Roadrunner Records is offering up the title track to the fourth DevilDriver album, “Pray For Villains.” It seems to us that the band keeps getting better with each album, and if this new song is any indication, that will continue. This sounds like the band’s been listening to some Machine Head! It’s fast, heavy and pretty much anything any fan of metal could ask for.
Metal Insider isn’t going to lie to you. It took a while for us to be won over to DevilDriver. As non-fans of Dez Fafara’s prior band, Coal Chamber, the release of DD’s debut album was met with a collective ‘meh’ by us. But each successive album kept getting better, and it became apparent that unlike Dez’ prior band, there was very little ”nu” in their metal. By the time their third album, The Last Kind Words, came out a few years ago, we were totally won over. What do you guys think?
1349 has posted a new song called “Atomic Chapel” on their MySpace page.
Amazon is joining the celebration of “March Is Metal Month” by offering many metal titles at just $6.99 along with free samplers from The End and Southern Lord.
Posted by Bram Teitelman on Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Free Stuff