The dates for the At the Gates reunion tour–the tour that every fan of Swedish death metal has been waiting for since the band broke up in 1996–have been announced. There’s no D.C. date, which breaks my heart, but there is some local relevancy: D.C.’s best melodic death metal band, Darkest Hour, and Richmond thrash revivalists Municipal Waste are the openers. Congrats guys!

Overheard yesterday at Orpheus Records in Arlington: the store might be closing within the next week. They have yet to hear from the landlord about an extension and they need time to pack up thousands of LPs and CDs (not to mention furniture and stereo gear).

Got some great deals yesterday on Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Pentangle and Julian Priester LPs.

Sale aside, this place has been around 31 years–that’s longer than either 9:30 Club or Dischord or most D.C. rock institutions. I’ll be real sad to see Rick go. Drop by while you still have the chance.

To: Bros
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: That sweet new Hate Eternal disc

Dudes, I just listened to the new Hate Eternal last night–after American Idol, of course—and it’s is every bit as good as the press it’s been getting. I don’t think I’ve dug a straight-up death metal record this much since I don’t know when. I mean, everyone loves Opeth, but I honestly can’t think of the last new death metal-qua-death metal record that I cared about–must’ve been, like, 6 or 7 years ago. Anyway, this is some weird, chromatic stuff. I mean, if you took out the cookie monster vocals, gave the drummer brushes, and ran the guitars through some Fender Twin Reverbs, folks would think this was an avant-jazz album. I mean, really. And great Onibaba cover, too.

BB

Wouldn’t Ramiele Malubay and David Archuleta make, like, the nicest couple ever? I think the two of them together might be able to achieve world peace.

Back in the late 90s, when I first started writing about underground metal for the Washington City Paper, music critics tended to ignore the so-called extreme underground or they specialized in it to the exclusion of everything else. Now it’s different. Pitchfork, which barely existed back then, has an extreme metal column. And Spin reviews records by the likes of Dillinger Escape Plan, Xasthur, and Mastodon.
So, I was kind of surprised to see the following sentence in Idolator’s “Anono-Critic” history of Revolver magazine (via Metalsucks):

“YB has been told by someone who should know that many [of Revolver’s] edit staffers and freelance writers…do not swear undying allegiance to the varieties of extreme metal, hardcore and screamo covered therein.”

Granted, the magazine cultivates a certain lifers-and-true-believers image (full disclosure: I am a contributor). But this ain’t 2002. Here’s one example of the new brand of metal critic: Kory Grow, the Revolver contributor who snuck “yenta” into an Ozzy live review, is not only a non-metal musician (“I played viola for 10 years,” he told me in an e-mail), but also—whaddya know—a generalist.

Here’s his bio:
Kory Grow is a New York-based writer and musician. He is currently associate editor for Revolver magazine and assistant editor for PaperThinWalls.com. He was recently an editor at both CMJ New Music Monthly and CMJ New Music Report. He’s written for the Village Voice, Magnet, Decibel, Harp, Signal to Noise, Alternative Press, Rockpile, Long Island City Ins & Outs, Red Flag Media’s in-store magazines and Mass Appeal.
Highlights have included talking music theory with Ornette Coleman, skirting Vincent Gallo with Jenny Lewis and discovering what David Yow really keeps in his pants. Check out his blog at http://sadnessisdelicious.blogspot.com/.

Kory adds, “I write a monthly classical-music column for Red Flag Media’s in-store mag Snap.”

Baltimore’s Human Bell—seen here performing at the Adams Morgan record store Crooked Beat—just announced a national tour with Japan’s Boredoms, a band that Washington City Paper’s Aaron Leitko described as the most bizarre “ever to have graced the roster of a major label.”

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band might dispute that claim, but I can say for certain that the Boredoms are one of the top-five best live acts I’ve ever seen (Brown’s Island, in 1994, with Sonic Youth and Superchunk).

Human Bell is Dave Heumann, frontman of Arbouretum, and Nathan Bell, best known as bassist for Lungfish. According to both bands’ label, Thrill Jockey, the Boredoms “handpicked” them for this tour.

Here are the dates. Alas, no DC:

Mon Mar 10 Lousiville, KY Ear X-Tacy (in-store)
Wed Mar 12 Dallas, TX Good Records (in-store) w/ Kid Dakota
Thur Mar 13 Marfa, TX TBA
Sat Mar 15 San Diego, CA Canes w/Boredoms
Sun Mar 16 Los Angeles, CA Family (in-store)
Sun Mar 16 Los Angeles, CA Henry Fonda Theater w/Boredoms
Mon Mar 17 San Luis Obispo, CA Boo Boo Records (in-store)
Tue Mar 18 San Francisco, CA The Fillmore Auditorium w/Boredoms
Thu Mar 20 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom w/Boredoms
Fri Mar 21 Seattle, WA Neumos w/Boredoms
Sat Mar 22 Anacortes, WA Department of Safety w/ Mt. Eerie, Photosynthesis
Mon Mar 23 Missoula, MT The Palace (Badlander downstairs, free show)
Tue Mar 25 Minneapolis, MN First Avenue w/Boredoms
Wed Mar 26 Chicago, IL Congress Theater w/Boredoms, Soft Circle
Thu Mar 27 Chicago, IL AV-Erie

The Boredoms will be at the 9:30 Club on April 3rd

From yesterday’s Washington Post:

“‘The last section of that song is known as the Obama fight song.’”
–Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, explaining the chanted chorus “We can make it better” during a performance last week at the District’s 9:30 Club”

In writing about the new Earth album, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, I was reminded of the first time I heard Earth 2, the Seattle act’s debut full-length and the record that started the drone-metal movement.

Earth 2 came out on Sub Pop in 1993, at the height of the grunge boom. At the time, I was a volunteer at a college radio station. I was as indifferent to grunge as was possible at the time, though I liked a song here and there (Nirvana’s “Negative Creep” and Mudhoney’s “Touch Me I’m Sick”). Thus, I didn’t even bother listening to Earth 2 when it arrived at the radio station. I just looked at the back cover photo of Dylan Carlson and his lone bandmate and decided that it was odd—and kind of sad—that this grunge band didn’t even have a drummer.

It wasn’t until a few years later, in 1996, that I found out that Earth 2 isn’t really a grunge record. I first heard it when I visited the Trans Am house in Takoma Park to interview the D.C. post-rock band for a never-published issue of my fanzine. It was late one Sunday morning. Various housemates and houseguests were beginning to stir and eat cold pizza when I got there.

Before long I noticed that there was a really pleasant buzz coming from the speakers in the living room. Ambient instrumentals were all the rage at the time and I just figured that this churning, slow-burning music was the product of some new band that Trans Am had befriended on the road (the trio had already done a European tour with Tortoise at that point).

But I was wrong. It was Earth 2. At the time, no one was championing metal in the indie rock underground (grunge had ruined the sound of distorted guitar for a lot of alt-rock types), so whichever member of Trans Am rescued this disc from a used bin deserves props for recognizing it for what it was: a precursor to the rise of instrumental rock. Only later would it become clear what it is: a precursor to the advent of alt-metal.

Sigh.

A few days before Joel and Ethan Coen’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men won Best Picture–and a little over a year after I wrote a piece about McCarthy fandom among metal bands–I noticed a reference to the book’s protagonist, Anton Chigurh, in a review of a metal record.

It’s no secret that metal fans love violent flicks, and that actual reading is in decline. So, I’m guessing that all of the references to Chigurh and metal (Google it) have more to do with the silver screen than with the printed page.

If that’s true, the Coen brothers will no doubt enter the pantheon of headbanger faves. What an honor to mentioned in the same breath as Fulci and Romero.