Doom metal supergroup Shrinebuilder played their second show ever on at club stage at Sonar in Baltimore last Friday night to a packed house. They didn’t disappoint: the songs from the album came off more powerful live, and some bits of new material sounded intriguing as well. As far as supergroups go, this one’s for real.

More photos (and a setlist) after the jump and at the full gallery.

Read More “Photos: Shrinebuilder @ Sonar” »

In which the author discusses parallels in the lives and work of two Charm City scribes.

Edgar Allan Poe, alcoholic inventor of Gothic literature, died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. Charm City commemorates the 160th anniversary of his death this week. But what does Poe have in common with David Simon, Baltimore native and creator of HBO’s “The Wire?”

Edgar Allen Poe: Deliberately sought court-martial at West Point to pursue career as a visionary writer. “I have no energy left, nor health,” he wrote his guardian. “I shall neglect my studies and duties at the institution.”
David Simon: Left the Baltimore Sun to pursue career as a visionary TV series creator. “I got out of journalism because some sons of bitches bought my newspaper and it stopped being fun,” he told the Baltimore City Paper.

Read More “Edgar Allan Poe and David Simon, Compared” »

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, but their live show is a beast of glacial proportions: fog so thick one can barely see fellow audience members, much less the performers on stage; hellish red light outlining black-robed band members; and, of course, so much sound that it is a physical presence in the room.

More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

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Canada’s Fuck the Facts are often pigeonholed as grindcore, but last year’s Disgorge Mexico showed the trio blowing up genre conventions and exploring sounds all their own. At their show last night in Baltimore, their setlist drew mainly from that album, bringing much-needed freshness to a show which to that point had been dominated by fairly cookie-cutter metalcore.

Fuck the Facts circa 2009 take the manic intensity of grindcore and tone it down a bit by throwing in all sorts of unexpected influences: slow, heavy sludge riffs, the occasional atmospherics, jazzy breaks, stoner-rock grooves, and full-on noise. The mastermind is guitarist Topon Das, but vocalist Mel Mongeon gets all the attention: while perhaps not the most dynamic of vocalists, her growls are incredibly harsh and fit the music perfectly, and her presence as a frontwoman is impressive to say the least, stalking around the stage looking like she was ready to explode into the crowd at any second. (Last night, she never did, but I’d guess that at better-attended shows the stage is not sufficient to contain her intensity.)

The biggest concession to grindcore convention that Fuck the Facts made was that they played an extremely short set, less than 30 minutes in total. Better too short than too long, as Mongeon intimated afterwards, but with metal this progressive and diverse, I could have done with much, much more.

More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.

EDIT: Metal Injection has posted three videos from this show, with great sound quality.

Read More “Photos: Fuck the Facts @ Talking Head” »

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” »

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.

The mid Atlantic ain’t exactly synonymous with kick-ass music festivals, but Baltimore’s renegade art/music collective Wham City (most famous member: Dan Deacon) might be changing that. This Friday kicks off the fourth annual Whartscape, a three-day, weekend-long sonic smorgasbord of B-more’s best and brightest bands, and their friends from the rest of the States and beyond. Wye Oak, Lo Moda, Bad Brilliance, and 13 other bands play from noon to 5 p.m outside the Baltimore Museum of Art. For free.

More info and video from last year’s Whartscape after the jump.

Read More “Whartscape 2009: Free Kick-Off Show Friday” »

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” »

Baltimore’s Double Dagger will be playing an in-store at Crooked Beat today at 7 p.m. The show is free. Expect it to be loud as hell. Double Dagger recently released its stunning third LP, More, on Thrill Jockey. We hope the Adams Morgan record shop has insurance; the band’s sound is all sharp elbows, pointed politics, and brash playing that is sure to rattle CD racks and vinyl displays.

The trio’s fuzzed-bass-and-monster drumming m.o. is a nod to that thinning brotherhood of post-punk musicians who highlight basement shows and fanzines (what are fanzines?), who haven’t thought about wearing guyliner and going emo, who haven’t dabbled in concept albums or made records where you need a Ph.D in Steve Reich to get. It’s a throwback sound; the members modest well be wearing bootleg Fugazi T-shirts. (You definitely hear Fugazi in one of DD’s older songs, “The Psychic”; the Jane Jacobs politics behind “Luxury Condos For the Poor” updates “Cashout.”) All this means is that Double Dagger is the token rock band on just about any bill.

But don’t let my lame comparison to Fugazi fool you. The band’s sound is all it’s own, having come from years of playing together. Double Dagger formed in 2002: bass guitar (Bruce Willen), that monster drumming (Brian Dubin) and singer/songwriting (Nolen Strals). Strals and Willen met in art school. Later, Dubin was replaced with drummer Denny Bowen.

This week we fired off some questions to the band via e-mail. The Q and A after the jump.

Read More “Tonight: Double Dagger To Play Free In-Store @ Crooked Beat” »