Yes, yes, when you hear people talking about going to see Iron Man this weekend, they’re probably talking about this Iron Man—or as I call it, Another Damned Comic Book Movie. But there’s another Iron Man in DC this weekend: the Gaithersburg-born doom-metal band, which headlines Velvet Lounge Saturday night.

The name, as you might guess, comes from their origins as a Black Sabbath cover band; their sound is drawn from those days too, specializing in the sludgy darkness that Ozzy, Tony, and the boys brought to life in the ’70s. Here’s a CP cover story on the band’s history from about three years ago, courtesy of the ever-reliable Mike Kanin.

It’s a 10 p.m. show, with two openers (Baltimore’s Revelation and Pennsylvania’s Pale Divine, and it’s only 8 bucks. Bring your black clothes; spiked collars, full goatees, and black eyeliner optional.

A friend just pointed out this post from Jessica Hopper’s blog, in which the blacklist-happy music writer goes after Chicago black-metal band Nachtmystium. The problem? Well, Hopper thinks they’re racist and homophobic.

Now, I loved Nachtmystium’s last album from 2006, an arty slab of psychedelic metal called Instinct: Decay. But I don’t go around doing due diligence on every band I like, so I’d never read any interviews in which frontman Blake Judd uses questionable language, or expresses questionable ideas.

But I decided to Google Nachtmystium and “Zionist conspiracy” and got nothing but Hopper’s blog. (Googling “Nachtmystium” and “Zionist” gets you here.) I didn’t bother with the f-word, because it seems clear enough that the guy is upset with message board lurkers, not, um, gay people.

Now, I’m not going to condone what Judd said, but, if Hopper’s going to call out poor Stephin Merritt for not liking rap, then perhaps she will understand that–as Faulkner once said about the South–some of us like despite, not because of.

I know. I know. It’s only April. Way too early to be making predictions about Album of the Year. Plus, it’s a metal record we’re talkin’ about and few will believe that a metal record–even a really catchy, accessible metal record–could ever be, you know, the record. (Those who already worship this album should just go check out the most genius thing on the Internet.)

But it must be said, just so I can say, I told you so: Torche’s Meanderthal, which came out on Tuesday, is this year’s album to beat. Even with its inappropriate title, Where the Wild Things Are cover art, and Heavy Metal Parking Lot lyrics (on “Across the Shield, Steve Brooks sings, “Impalin’ every born knight/Raidin’, pierced the hole, rite”), this album does more, aesthetically, and does it better than anything else I’ve heard this year, or last year.

Seriously.

You can hear Meanderthal here.

From Victory Records’ publicity department:

Darkest Hour have recorded a new arena anthem for their favorite ice hockey team - the Washington Capitals.

Based on their song A Thousand Words To Say But One, Let’s Go Caps! can be downloaded from a special page Darkest Hour have set up www.myspace.com/letsgocapsmusic

Ex-youth puck player and Darkest Hour guitarist Mike Schleibaum notes about their forays into sports themes: “It was something we did just for pure fun. I mean, when you play music - especially death metal - for a living, you start to take a lot way too seriously. This tune is pure fun. We recorded and produced it ourselves in one night after reminiscing about our love for hockey - and don’t forget, the beers helped. If you listen to the backup vocals you’ll hear many of our friends that love hockey. Yeah, the crowd voices are actually a big group of all our D.C. friends. We just called ‘em up and said, “Hey, you guys want some beers and to scream ‘Let’s Go Caps!’ for a few hours?” It was a hell of a night!”

Truth be told, it’s actually pretty practical as far as hockey cheers go. Sure, the tempo is a little fast for 18,000+ rabid hockey fans at Verizon Center to keep up with in unison, but the lyrics are easy enough to remember (Uh…”Let’s go Caps. Let’s gooooooo, let’s gooooooo Capitals! Washington Capitals!”), and it’s certainly menacing enough to intimidate (or confuse) the hell out of the opposing team.

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.

BoingBoing, a little late to the party, celebrates the virtues of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Old news to us around here, of course, but I confess that I didn’t know about the ringtones until I saw the BB post.

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!

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

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.”

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.