Bloody Panda and Salome brought deafening volume levels to The Red and the Black’s tiny performance space last Thursday night. Bloody Panda (pictured above) is a six-piece from New York City, signed to the brilliant Profound Lore Records, whose recorded output is an intriguingly unconventional mix of glacial riffs and ethereal vocals. Their live show completely failed to connect with me, unfortunately, with the compositions seeming disjointed and several ideas dragged out for far longer than they deserved.

Salome, Virginia’s best doom metal band, probably need little introduction here. Thursday was their last D.C.-area show before kicking off a lengthy tour in September (with Hull and the absolutely fantastic Batillus) that the band still need help booking. Their set was tremendous as always, and the material seemed a bit more diverse than I’d noticed before, with long sections of droning feedback juxtaposed against much faster sections of near-blast-beat intensity.

More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

Read More “Photos: Bloody Panda & Salome @ The Red and the Black” »

The husband/wife duo of Amber Valentine and D.C. native Edgar Livengood, aka Jucifer, don’t really tour so much as they live their lives on the road. Of the many bands out there that seem to tour constantly, Jucifer probably has them all beat. So it makes sense that their live show is a completely different animal from their recorded output.

On record, Jucifer’s music is song-based heavy alternative rock with the occasional curveball thrown in from sources as diverse as sludgy metal, pseudo-grindcore, neo-folk balladry and more. But live, Jucifer is, pure and simple, a volume fetishist’s dream, with enough amps to play an arena show without a PA. (At the Ottobar, the venue PA was used, and hilariously, all but one of the stage monitors was turned to face the audience.) They play all the loud and heavy stuff and none of the poppier stuff, with no breaks between songs, such that the entire concert experience is a visceral exercise in noise. This is either a beautiful thing or a supremely annoying thing, depending on who you ask.

The small but enthusiastic crowd on Monday night at the Ottobar seemed to fall in the former camp. Jucifer’s short set was satisfying, cathartic, and well-received. A band that tours this much and regularly plays to tiny audiences has to love what they’re doing, and with Jucifer this comes through in the almost joyful intensity they exude onstage. It’s the loudest live show this side of Sunn O))), and it’s a hell of a lot of fun to boot.

More photos after the jump, and check out the full gallery including the three opening bands.

Read More “Photos: Jucifer @ Ottobar” »

Last Friday night, Jaxx may have been the best place to find the highest concentration of absurdly talented musicians in the D.C. area. Florida legends Atheist, featuring a brand-new guitarist who made his debut at Maryland Deathfest, headlined a show full of technical metal bands and enough fast riffage, blast beats and time changes to make any metal nerd happy. Atheist was great, and visibly looser and more confident than their somewhat tentative show at MDF back in May. Their setlist drew from numerous albums in the band’s discography, and other than an unfortunately-timed sound issue that marred “Mother Man” (from the classic Unquestionable Presence), the band was tight and seemingly flawless.

More words and images after the jump; an excessive number of photos can be found at the full gallery.

Read More “Photos: Atheist @ Jaxx” »

Just when you thought Baltimore was safe from metalheads again, the folks behind Maryland Deathfest have gone and made some initial lineup announcements for the next installment of the festival, set for May 28-30, 2010. This is no tentative first step, either; a whopping 18 bands were announced today as performers at next year’s event:

Entombed (Sweden)
Obituary
Pentagram
Eyehategod
Sinister (Netherlands)
Incantation
Portal (Аustralia)
Haemorrhage (Spain)
Impaled
Gridlink
Ingrowing (Czech Republic)
Gride (Czech Republic)
Massgrave (Canada)
16
Birds Of Prey
Fuck The Facts (Canada)
Tombs
Howl

Organizer Ryan Taylor says, “Headliners and many more bands are still TBA. Headliner announcements could come within the next 1-2 weeks.”

We won’t be blogging every band announcement here, of course, so keep your eyes on the MDF website and the MDF forums for the breaking news as it happens.

Alright, that’s it for this year. Saturday might have been the big draw at Maryland Deathfest 2009, but Sunday was no disappointment either, unless you were a Pestilence fan. Pestilence cancelled due to visa issues and were replaced by a second set of Bolt Thrower, who played the same set as Saturday in a different order, and on the inside stage where things got a bit more intense (and a lot hotter) than Saturday’s outdoor show.

The highlights of the day for me were Kill the Client, ridiculously intense political grindcore from Texas, and Yakuza, who were really a nice change of pace with their atmospheric, deliberately paced compositions and their prominent use of saxophone. More thoughts and photos after the jump – and the full Sunday gallery with nearly 200 photos is here.

Read More “Photos: Maryland Deathfest VII Sunday” »

So this belongs pretty clearly in the Better Late Than Never department, but those of us who attended Maryland Deathfest this year are already looking forward to next year’s installment, so consider this, uh, a preview of MDF VIII. Yeah.

Between photography and sheer metal overload, I saw a number of bands about which I couldn’t tell you a single word about, musically at least. Flesh Parade, Birdflesh, Misery Index, Phobia, Immolation… they may have played some great music, and I might have photographic evidence of them, but I have absolutely no memory of their sets. So instead of attempting to do a verbal recap, I’ll just let the photos do the talking, after the jump. There’s also a full Saturday gallery here, with 227 photos.

Read More “Photos: Maryland Deathfest VII Saturday” »

I’m going to hazard a guess that during yesterday’s music-packed evening in D.C., the only show that could rival Peter Brötzmann’s trio in intensity was The Dillinger Escape Plan at Rock & Roll Hotel. If you’ve seen DEP before or you read my writeup of their Baltimore show this past Feburary, you know the drill.

R&R Hotel had a few security guys lined up in front of the stage to try to keep control. I asked one of them if they knew what they were in for. “Oh yeah, we know all about it,” came the confident reply. The thick padding taped over the venue’s giant wall mirrors, and the ceiling above the stage, seemed to confirm this, but the “NO STAGE DIVING / NO CROWDSURFING” signs posted everywhere were overly optimistic.

Photos and a few more thoughts after the jump. Full gallery here.

Read More “Photos: The Dillinger Escape Plan @ Rock & Roll Hotel” »

If this week’s Opeth and Enslaved bill at the 9:30 Club was an inspired pairing, the combination of Isis and Pelican tomorrow at the Black Cat is almost too obvious. Imagine post-rock played with heavy metal riffs and you’ve got the right idea for both these groups. Isis are touring in support of new release Wavering Radiant, which sees the band cutting back on the gorgeous distorted fuzz of earlier works like Panopticon in favor of a looser, more psychedelic vibe. Vocalist Aaron Turner (also the boss man of Hydra Head Records) has added a decent singing voice to his repertoire to augment his guttural screams, and uses it to good effect on the new material. Isis’ current output is somewhat less sweepingly epic than their earlier work, but it’s still very much widescreen in nature.

Openers Pelican might glibly be called the Explosions in the Sky of metal. Pelican’s music is entirely instrumental and immediately accessible: melodic and major-key, yet still heavy. On their own they might be a little lightweight, but paired with Isis, they should offer a nice counterpoint to the headliners’ more doom-laden heft.

Isis, Pelican and Tombs play at the Black Cat mainstage Saturday night, $15 at the door, 9pm.

Sweden’s Opeth and Norway’s Enslaved played to a reverent near-capacity crowd at the 9:30 Club last night. Putting these two bands together was an inspired idea, as both currently play a kind of heavy progressive metal with melodic passages and clean vocals mixed into the downtuned riffs and growls. However, the bands’ backgrounds are different enough (Opeth coming from more thrash/death origins and Enslaved from a pure black metal past) that there was a healthy variety, although another thing both bands have in common is a funny, talkative frontman.

Brief recap and a few photos after the jump. Full gallery here.

Read More “Photos: Opeth and Enslaved @ 9:30 Club” »

So that was fun. Festival organizers estimated that some 2,700 people attended this year’s (incredibly well-run) Maryland Deathfest. I missed the first day, but will post more about Saturday and Sunday of MDF VII later. For now, here are a few photos and my thoughts in superlative form, after the jump.

Read More “Quick & Dirty Recap: Maryland Deathfest VII” »