The D.C. area grindcore trio Pig Destroyer doesn’t play here–or anywhere–all that often. But, when it does, it plays on some pretty amazing bills.

The band’s label, Relapse, just announced a new four-date world tour which includes the band’s first-ever stop at the Black Cat:

PIG DESTROYER will first perform a local Washington, DC show on April 11th at the Black Cat along with label-mates MISERY INDEX as well as MAGRUDERGRIND and THE WAYWARD.

PIG DESTROYER will then head to Japan in early May for ‘Extreme The Dojo 20’ as headlined by the re-united AT THE GATES. Also on the tour are PIG DESTROYER labelmates THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN. A listing of PIG DESTROYER live dates can be found below with more tour plans to be announced shortly.

PIG DESTROYER Tour Dates:

April 11 Washington, DC Black Cat (w/ MISERY INDEX, MAGRUDERGRIND, THE WAYWARD)

***‘Extreme The Dojo 20’ Japanese Tour with AT THE GATES, THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN, MAYHEM, INTO ETERNITY***

May 8 Osaka, Japan Hatch

May 9 Nagoya, Japan Club Quattro

May 11 Tokyo, Japan Studio Coast

Here’s the band’s extreme MySpace page. And here’s an extreme article about Pig Destroyer from 2001 and an extreme review of the band’s latest, Phantom Limb.

I can’t really disagree with Anne Midgette, who reviewed the Washington National Opera’s new production of “The Flying Dutchman” in the Washington Post. It’s a mixed bag (Senta, who was played by Lori Phillips last night, was excellent). But I will say this: the most Wagnerian elements of the opera—the creepy ghosts, the enormous bass riffs, the lines about doomsday and eternal damnation—were enough to ward off the after-work sleepiness that I was feeling at the beginning of the overture. For a metal and horror fan such as myself, it’s a great story, and the abstract expressionist staging was well suited to the telling. Playing through April 10th.

Ballrogg, a Norwegian duo, is coming to Blues Alley for two sets on Wednesday, April 2. The band’s bassist, Roger Arntzen, is a member of In the Country, a Keith Jarrett-esque piano trio that records for one of my favorite boutique labels, Rune Grammofon. I wrote a piece about the Oslo indie and two of its records in the spring of 2005 (”The Fjord Foundation“). Since then, I have yet to hear weak Rune Grammofon disc.

Ballrogg’s debut is on a label called Bolage, not on RG, but that shouldn’t keep you away from this unusual Blues Alley booking. According to its PR, the band will be “exploring the music of Eric Dolphy in a small format, stripped down to only bass and reeds.”

Eric Alterman has an article in the New Yorker this week about the state of the newspaper industry. He makes some great points, but also makes a statement that is more a wail of liberal anguish than a prediction that can be supported by history: the newspaper is in its death throes. (If that were true why would anyone care about this man’s job?)

Seems to me that what he means to say is that the newspaper as we know it is dying.

But hasn’t that been happening for a long time? Morning and evening editions? Several dailies in every large town?

Could it be that the newspaper-in-a-diminished-form will coexist with the internet the same way that movies and television coexist? Or the way that MP3s and vinyl coexist?

The Nationals are requesting your votes for “7th Inning Stretch Song,” “Home Run Song,” and “Victory Song.” As pointed out in this Idolator post, there’s only one local choice in there, Chuck Brown’s “Bustin Loose” (my personal theme music for overeating) and the rest are pretty crappy (though I do get goosebumps whenever I hear U2’s “Beautiful Day”).

You’d think that, instead of Blur’s Fugazi rip-off “Song 2,” we could get an actual Fugazi song. Luckily, there’s a write-in function.

Orpheus Records in Arlington is still open despite staff predictions that the store would be closed by now.

According to store owner Rick Carlisle, “it seems likely” that the bricks-and-mortar version of Orpheus will now stay open through the end of April.

In case you haven’t been following this story, here’s the original news item from Black Plastic Bag and an excellent article from the Washington Post.

A friend just sent me a link to a PopMatters post about the demise of Silver Spring’s Harp Magazine. I asked a colleague who would know and I was told that it is indeed true.

Looks like the issue with Dain Bramage’s Dave Grohl on the cover might be the magazine’s swan song.

First Maxim dissed the Black Crowes‘ new record, Warpaint, without ever hearing it. Now, the New York Times has screwed up their name, referring to the popular roots-rock act as “the Black Cowes.” Will their tribulations ever end?

DC music writer Marc Masters‘ No Wave book has been out for a couple months now. The Village Voice reviewed it last November. And Washington City Paper’s Mark Athitakis reviewed it and interviewed Masters back in January.

I didn’t write about it when it came out for a lot of boring reasons, but I wanted to blog about the book a bit on a personal level. Masters is a friend and when he contacted me about using some of the No Wave-related interviews that I conducted in the late ‘90s I was more than happy to dig through my archives. This is less glamorous than it sounds. It involves moving my cat’s litter box, as well as numerous suitcases and various paint buckets and such.

The reason I had this material in the first place is because, when I first acquired and became enamored with the Brian Eno-produced No New York compilation album—the central document in the noisy No Wave movement—I decided to write an article about it. I did this not because I was looking for something to write, but because I was curious and it didn’t seem like anyone had ever tackled the subject of this 1978 album—or at least not retrospectively.

Basically, what I was looking for was Masters’ book. It is every bit as exhaustive as I wanted my article about the No New York album to be but wasn’t. The New York-based post-punk movement called No Wave didn’t last long and didn’t leave many recordings behind (the big bands are MARS, DNA, and the Contortions). So, every 7-inch takes on the importance of an album—or even a sub-genre. This might smack of nerdy obsessiveness, but you just can’t cover the subject at length without getting into that level of detail.

Masters contributes to the forward-pushing British magazine The Wire, a publication that panned his book, saying that it’s too academic. It’s an odd charge coming from a review that’s much drier than the book itself. The main bone of contention seems to be the footnotes at the end of each chapter. I guess Masters could’ve included the attributions in the text, but he did so much research for this thing that it might’ve just bogged down the prose. Besides, Lester Bangs already dealt with this stuff, critically, in his usual blurtin’ fashion. A more thorough journalistic approach was overdue–and that’s just what Masters provides.

Yesterday afternoon, Pitchfork announced part of the lineup for its popular Pitchfork Music Festival, which returns to Chicago’s Union Park on July 18 - 20.

One of the bands included in this partial list is the semilocal Afropop quartet Extra Golden. This is especially welcome news, because the African portion of the band has been caught up in Kenya’s recent unrest.

When I enquired with the band’s label, Thrill Jockey, they told me that the PFMF is going to be just one part of an upcoming American tour, “likely including a DC date,” and more recording, too. Good news.

Here’s yours truly on the band’s most recent, Hera Ma Nono, which was released just prior to the post-election chaos in Kenya.

And here’s the band’s Web site, where you can make a donation to help the Kenyan members of Extra Golden.