Excessive volume was the name of the game at the Black Cat backstage on Monday night, where an impressive crowd gathered for a few hours of eardrum abuse courtesy of Jucifer and Salome. The two bands were wrapping up a minitour together, and they certainly went out with a bang.
More photos after the jump and [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
