Posts Tagged ‘Metal’
Photos: Om @ DC9
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 little sloppy. Still, with Cisneros staring wide-eyed at nothing while slamming his palm against his bass and Amos bashing the skins as gleefully as Hakius used to, it’s hard not to be transfixed by this band.
More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.
Photos: Hanzel und Gretyl @ Jaxx
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 after the jump and at the full gallery.
Photos: In Flames @ 9:30 Club
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 Club, BTBAM satisfied a crowd full of fans screaming, “You guys should headline this tour!” while In Flames more than matched BTBAM, with exponentially more energy than they had at that Baltimore show last winter.
More photos after the jump and at the full gallery.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra Welcomes You to Rock Your Nuts Off
Or something like that. The icicle-clad symphonic carnival that is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra drops Night Castle, its 72nd collection of goose-pimpled holiday favorites bastardized for Ratt fans who accepted Jesus but can’t give up the Floyd Rose Double-Locking Tremolo, on October 27.
The first single is called “Nutrocker.” Look for it nowhere, because there isn’t a DJ in the country who will get behind such a goddamn ridiculous name.
Photos: Sunn O))) @ Sonar
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.
Salome, Batillus and Hull Kick Off September Tour Tonight
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 bands like Alcest, Nadja, Krallice etc). When I spoke to the band a month or so ago, they said they were planning to take a break from live shows after this tour and begin recording their next album.
Salome are fantastic but Hull and Batillus are nothing to sneeze at either. You can download the latter’s EP for free and see for yourself, or just catch all three bands live – they’ll be in Baltimore tomorrow night at Talking Head, and then at College Park’s Marblehaus (3738 Marlbrough Way, College Park, MD) on Saturday night.
Full tour dates after the jump.
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Dethklok and Mastodon Touring 34 Cities
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 drops Sept. 8.
High on Fire and Converge will open the 34 shows–one of which will be at GMU’s Patriot Center on Oct. 31.
Electronic Arts is sponsoring the tour (which is sort of odd if you consider the new Dethklok video game is a Konami product), thus every concert will have console stations where audience members can try out Brutal Legend, EA’s new video game featuring voiceover work by Jack Black.
More deets after the jump.
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Photos: Fuck the Facts @ Talking Head
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.
Photos: Bloody Panda & Salome @ The Red and the Black
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.
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Photos: Jucifer @ Ottobar
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.
