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.

Full gallery here.

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.

EAP: Won acclaim for “MS. Found in a Bottle,” a sea-adventure tale that, according to biographer Kenneth Silverman, “creates a sustained crescendo of ever-building dread in the face of ever-stranger and ever-more-imminent catastrophe.”
DS: Won acclaim for Homicide, a non-fiction book and television show that celebrates the human ability overcome the catastrophe that is murder. “[It's] very much a celebration of the human spirit under pressure,” Simon told the Baltimore City Paper.

EAP: Set the standard for compelling Gothic literature with the poem “The Raven,” in which an unnamed narrator is tormented by an eerie bird. “Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore,” Poe wrote. “Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore./Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”
DS: Set the standard for compelling cable television on Season 4 of The Wire, in which serial murderers Chris and Snoop torment the enemies of druglord Marlo Stanfield with eerie apathy. “When you think of Chris and Snoop, think of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, only smart,” Stephen King wrote. “And with a nail gun.”

EAP: Died in Baltimore after a bender with, according to onlookers, a look of “vacant stupidity.”
DS: Concluded the final season of the The Wire with a bender of sloganeering against anti-corporate journalism that, according to some critics, was stupid.

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.

Eagle Twin, Sunn O)))’s labelmates on Southern Lord, opened:

Full gallery here.

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.

Full gallery here.

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.

Two Baltimore bands, Pala and Nitroseed, opened, as well as hard-rockers Mount Vicious from San Francisco:

Full photoset here.

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.

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

Not familiar with Wham City? Get acquainted. B-more’s a quirky metropolis with a soundtrack to match. Just as trained ears can pick out a distinctive D.C. post-punk grind, Baltimore’s deafening feature is noisy pop. And Wham City’s noisy pop, Baltimoreans will agree, is de riguer. It’s a bit off in the best way possible, and so is Baltimore.

Mega-Ppsses and Friday evening’s show in the BMA auditorium are sold out, but tickets for individual shows are still available for $18. Considering each set’s lineup of 20+ bands, that’s a lot of bang for your buck.

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.

D.C.’s own Magrudergrind were the first set I saw on Sunday, and they were great. Singer was a joy to photograph as well:

The aforementioned Kill the Client, whose singer spent at least half the set crowdsurfing and moshing in the crowd, mic cord trailing behind him:

Splitter, one of many bands about which I remember absolutely nothing:

The worst set of the weekend, by far, came from Despise You. If anyone can explain the appeal of this terrible band to me, I’ll give you a cookie. Seriously, go have a listen and let me know a single thing enjoyable about this crap.

Yakuza, as mentioned, were awesome:

The Red Chord seem to draw wildly conflicting opinions, but I liked them:

Normally the complex black-metal stylings of Krallice would have really appealed to me, but it required a bit too much brainpower at that point in the weekend and kind of went in one ear and out the other. I’d like to see them again.

Fans got really stoked for Destroyer 666. Despite not being familiar with them beforehand, I was impressed with their show and picked up a couple records afterwards. They ended up being the de facto headliners after Pestilence dropped out, and they stepped up to the plate pretty damn well.

Devourment is a band in which I have little interest on record; their “slam metal” is way too simplistic and obvious to keep my interest over the course of a full album. Live, though, the continuous onslaught of mosh-ready power is pretty intoxicating:

Japan’s Sigh closed out the fest with a literal bang, as singer/saxophonist Mikannibal dripped candle wax onto herself before blowing a fireball towards the audience. Their set was a nice cross-section of recent material, and their crazily bombastic energy was a better way to close out a long day of metal than Wolves in the Throne Room’s slow drone from Saturday night.

Full gallery here.

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.

The fans up front at the outdoor stage were loving Martin van Drunen and Hail of Bullets:

General Surgery brought up the ridiculousness quotient of the day with their “nurses,” who served no purpose other than to reapply fake blood to the band’s costumes, and then wander out into the pit to anoint fans with the stuff:

As I mentioned before, seeing Napalm Death at dusk might have been the highlight of the fest for me:

Weekend Nachos brought the crazy for the entirety of their 15-minute set:

Glowsticks and absurd costumes were a welcome dose of silliness, courtesy of Birdflesh:

You won’t find a more demonstrative frontman than Brutal Truth’s Kevin Sharp, who repeatedly slammed his mic into his forehead, eventually breaking it:

One of the sets about which I remember absolutely nothing. Sorry, Phobia:

Wolves in the Throne Room closed out the night enveloped in a deep blue fog, which was similar to my mental state after seeing 15 bands’ worth of death metal and grindcore:

And finally, I lost count of the number of t-shirts I saw at MDF that I fervently hoped were not frequently worn outside the context of a metal festival. A couple less offensive examples:

Full Saturday gallery here.

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.

What have you guys been up today?

DENNY: I just woke up about 15 minutes ago. I put some coffee on. Bruce is probably drinking some somewhere. Nolen might have a hot chocolate though.

Why do you think Baltimore has such a fertile music scene? What do you think has made it so special?

DENNY: I think Baltimore has always been a fertile music scene and we recently had a great boom, which is undoubtedly really awesome. But I’m getting somewhat concerned because I don’t see too many new bands forming. I see a number of new faces that have moved to Baltimore and have been drawn here for the artistic reasons, but I haven’t seen much output from this wave.

Maybe the new output lies with other art forms, but I can’t really comment on that. Also Baltimore is a small city and that is bound to breed a strong community. We actively fight to keep our arts and music scene alive and for the ability to support it. There is more crossover with bands and artists working with others that are coming from somewhere else entirely and still will have huge support from their peers. The specialness, I think, comes from a lack of shitty bands. But yeah, you want the short answer? Cheap rent.

Do you ever feel like the token rock band in Baltimore?

DENNY:  Maybe the loudest, but not the token rock band. I feel like we get called that at times, which makes us think we’re doing something right. However, there have always been some great rock bands in Baltimore, going back to the start of Double Dagger to present times.

When you started writing More, did you have goals in mind on what you wanted the album to sound like?

DENNY: I think we wanted to be more powerful; we started writing these songs in late 2007 and I think we had less of a conscious idea of what we wanted the songs to sound like, we just played very much with one another, and not just playing at the same time.

I think More is one of the records that really stood out for me in that it doesn’t have a lot of gimmicks–it’s a rock record. A lot of indie bands seem to be straying from making rock or indie rock albums. I think it’s difficult to make a good rock album–maybe more difficult than making a high concept freak folk record with loops and french horn parts. What do you think?

DENNY: Hey, more for us then! Seriously, I think a lot of bands are very timid when it comes to making a rock record. With technology today, it’s somewhat difficult for bands not to indulge in its uses. We only wanted to capture our songs as best we could and flourish them up in subtle ways and having that sort of minimalist approach is what retains the quality, in my opinion. There’s a place for everything, so the most difficult thing is being appropriate. It’s easy to get caught up in genres, sub-categorization, and ghettoizing bands and we choose to not subscribe to any of that. Not that many other bands are, but to be honest, I don’t know what “freak folk” is. Is it really freaky?

What was the hardest part about making More?

DENNY: Staying warm and avoiding being towed. Also, carrying all the equipment (including 3 bass cabinets) up and down like 6 flights of stairs really sucked. Recording the songs was mostly a smooth process, we knew them inside and out.

I think the drumming on the record is one of the most amazing things about More. Please praise the drumming. Do you think drums really make a band?

DENNY:  Totally! We wanted to make sure that the way the drums sounded on the record would be more like the way it sounds when you’re standing in front of a drummer, and less like there are 3 mics on every angle of the drum. Additionally, Bruce and I have really synced up since we started writing the songs for More. There are only two instruments, so Bruce and I try to tastefully fill up any of the “space.”

My father once told me that you can have a bad band with a good drummer and it can still sound good, but not the other way around. I think this statement holds true.

How do you think your sound has evolved? How do you think its evolved lyrically?

DENNY: I think the music has evolved in that we have thought less about what we wanted to sound like, and just played what we felt. As I said before, we focused more on complimenting one another’s parts and how we can best serve each song. By doing this, I think its opened Nolen up to be more poetic and abstract with his lyrics.

NOLEN: Lyrically I dropped the art/design reference/metaphor thing a while back. It had run its course, and honestly I felt like it was holding me or us back some. Lyrically, there are still angry screeds here and there, but life’s a little more complex at 30 than it is at 24, so what you write about just naturally becomes more complex. I’m not weaving intricate, literate, epics, but the point of view of the lyrics is more open and has more shades of gray, and less black and white than it sometimes was in the past. Of course there’s still some of that more direct, antagonistic approach, because sometimes that’s most effective.

This is for Nolen, I read somewhere that your parents are/were ministers? Where did you grow up? Did they have a church? What was growing up like?

NOLEN: Both of my parents have been United Methodist Ministers since the mid 80s, though my dad recently retired. I mainly grew up in small towns in the mountains of North Georgia, and they each served separate churches.

I don’t think my upbringing was too different from that of most kids raised by a religious family in the South. My parents always were and still are very supportive of everything I do. My mom even let me have shows in the basement of her church-owned house. There was an awkward period in the 7th grade when I first told my parents I didn’t believe in religion. But honestly my classmates were harder on me for that than my parents were.

A lot of kids stopped associating with me for that, but the metal kids started talking to me more.

How do you think that experienced effected you? How do you think it influenced your approach to songwriting and singing?

NOLEN: While I do not share their religious beliefs, I’ve always been inspired by my parents’ conviction in their faith. I watched my dad face a lot of opposition and backhanded crap from the good-ol’-boy church political machine. He’s a moving speaker and could have risen higher in the church had he toed the party line more, and his career visibly and financially suffered for following his heart instead of politics.

If there’s any influence from my upbringing on what I do in the band, that’s a huge one, speaking my mind about what I feel strongly about, no matter its popularity or what people may think of it. That and my leftist political leaning. My parents aren’t 100% liberal, but they’re certainly further left than most people ignorantly think southern Christians can be.

I read somewhere that you all played the Rock and Roll Hotel and the audience kinda sucked–what happened?

DENNY: Just was a very sparse audience, and we started kind of early. It was hard to gather back up in the drum world, but DC audiences have somewhat of a notoriety for being “stiff,” and obviously our M.O. goes right against that.

I toured with the Dan Deacon ensemble this spring and when we played DC on that tour, people did go crazy and had a great time. Hopefully there will be more of that in DC in the future.

What do you hope the D.C. audience will do this time around when seeing you guys?

DENNY: Unfold their arms and slamdance!