"Wasn't he just here?" you might be thinking. Well, yes, but the last time famed free-jazzer Peter Brötzmann played the Velvet Lounge, just a few weeks ago, he wasn't backed by a rhythm section straight out of the extreme metal world.
Full Blast sees Brötzmann in a trio with electric bassist Marino Pliakas and whirling dervish/drummer [...]
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.
Maryland Deathfest is about to kick off its first day in a couple hours, but better late than never, right? I'll be covering Saturday and Sunday, but for anyone still thinking about heading up to Baltimore (tickets are still available, but not many of them!), here is my absolutely non-comprehensive and subjective preview of [...]
Less than two weeks out from the festival's kick-off on Friday, May 22, Maryland Deathfest organizers have announced that, in order to accommodate higher than expected ticket sales, the fest will have a stage set up outside Sonar, in addition to the Sonar main stage. As of today, tickets are available again for purchase but [...]
Hard-rock/metal arena show up in Baltimore on Tuesday: Disturbed, Killswitch Engage, Lacuna Coil and Chimaira. No words for this one, just the photos, after the jump. I did get a chance to interview Lacuna Coil's Cristina Scabbia before the show, though, the results of which I'll be posting in the future.
There are also more of [...]
Apparently I picked the worst time possible to take a long weekend and skip town, because for the experimental jazz/rock fan there is something awesome happening every night for the next four nights. Check it out:
Thursday, April 16: Composer/arranger Ed Palermo will be conducting the U.S. Army Blues ensemble in a program comprised entirely of [...]
This happened 10 days ago, but it's worth a look back: cellist Erik Friedlander brought his "Broken Arm Trio" to An Die Musik in Baltimore. This trio—Friedlander on his fancy carbon-fiber cello, Trevor Dunn on upright bass, and Michael Sarin on drums—was, as Friedlander explained during the set, conceived as a sort of tribute to [...]
Seems like a lot of interesting metal shows are hitting Baltimore this spring but not D.C. Case in point: The Acacia Strain at the Ottobar last Thursday. Although pigeonholed as metalcore, much to their chagrin, this band plays a brutal, complex brand of death metal that's pretty far from the dumbed-down stuff that "metalcore" often [...]
I don't really have many true "favorites" when it comes to music, simply because there's too much good stuff out there to single out particular bands or albums. That said, Despised Icon is far and away my favorite metalcore band. I'm only slowly coming around to the mixing of extreme metal and hardcore, but DI [...]
Random fact: for a while last year after Swedish technical death metallers Meshuggah came out with their latest album, ObZen, I used the opening track, "Combustion," to get myself out of bed every morning. It was perfect: a few seconds of quiet, rhythmic guitar as an initial alarm, before the full band kicks in for [...]
