The 9:30 Club hosted a local-ish metal blowout on Thursday: Lamb of God (Richmond), Darkest Hour (D.C.), Periphery (Bethesda) and This or the Apocalypse (Lancaster, PA). The seriously high-energy performances were matched by one of the most active, enthusiastic crowds I've ever seen at a D.C. show.
More photos after the jump and at the full [...]
Salome, one of the few metal bands that performed at this year's CMJ.
For D.C. bands, the takeaway from CMJ seems to have been this: It will not pluck you from obscurity, but it can't hurt. Also: Don't believe the hype.
"The myth that you can land the perfect agent or manager at a place like that—I don’t think [...]
Al Cisneros got a haircut, Chris Hakius morphed into Emil Amos (pictured above), and Robert Lowe of Lichens sat in on guitar, keys, and percussion. Om is very different now than they were when they last played D.C. Some growing pains were evident as the sound was rough and some of the pieces seemed a [...]
New York's Hanzel und Gretyl are a thoroughly ridiculous band in music, lyric (their latest big hit? "Fukken Uber Death Party"), and imagery. Luckily, they know it, and they don't take themselves seriously at all. As a result, a show that would just be utterly laughable is, well, still laughable, but also big fun.
More photos [...]
What a difference a year makes: last December, Swedish death metal icons In Flames were blown off the stage by their opening band (Gojira) in Baltimore; last May, North Carolinian prog-metallers Between the Buried and Me played to a disinterested audience of Dream Theater fans at DAR Constitution Hall. On Monday at a packed 9:30 [...]
Categorizing Sunn O))) as drone/doom metal is only really appropriate when the duo are at the peak of their Earth-tribute mode. This was very much in evidence last night at Sonar, where at least half the band's 90-minute set was more like avant-garde noise played really, really loud. Sunn O))) can be a bit inscrutable, [...]
That's three pretty kick-ass doom metal bands, all in one place. We've spilled a fair amount of digital ink about NoVA's Salome (pictured above); today they start their first-ever proper tour, a few weeks after releasing the big news that they have been signed to the excellent experimental metal label Profound Lore (also home to [...]
If you want to mellow out a monkey, play him some Metallica.
That's the surprising result of a new study by Charles Snowdon, a
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor. The researchers played clips of music— including Metallica's
"Of Wolf and Man," Nine Inch Nails', "The Fragile," Tool's "The
Grudge," and Barber's "Adagio for Strings"—for cotton-top tamarins.
According to one Nick Green, "Screamo bands covering Top 40 songs [is a] full blown epidemic." He's right: Lil Wayne. The Fray. The Postal Service. The Knack, for Christ's sake (personally, I love that last one–it's good background music for shot-gunning 16-ounce Natty Lights). In an ongoing special over at Decibel's Deciblog, contributors put 16 [...]
Not only is Dethklok getting its own video game, but Brendan Small's once-imaginary band has somehow managed to arrange a 7-week tour with Mastodon, the most popular metal act to come out of Atlanta and Metallica's current tour opener. Mastodon's Crack the Skye hit the streets in March of this year, and Dethklok's Dethalbum II [...]
