FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
You won’t hear any misguided stabs at nü-metal or techno; only a trio of dudes and their respective endorsement deals doing what they do damn well, and having a good time at it (while concocting some of the corniest titles this side of a Skyclad album). The Steve Morse Band delivers flash with class.
A pretty cool find from a band on the cusp of the post-hardcore movement—especially considering the direction its members went afterwards. I guess they didn’t start smoking reefer till they moved away from their parents…
The Endless Blockade took over with an electronic-noise enhanced set that was a bit more varied, and was arguably even more unrelenting. Their singer constantly confronted the crowd, moving as deep into the sweaty mass as he could. Keep in mind, there wasn’t much floor space to work with, and there was no stage. Just like a basement show, they were sandwiched next to the crowd who was standing on the same floor. Even this guy felt the need to constantly engage with me, running directly into me at least five times.
Why does everyone always pick on me?
Jay Gorania recaps his take on this year’s SXSW Music Festival. In this second entry, he reviews the Profound Lore Records/20 Buck Spin showcase as well as sets by The Atlas Moth, Rwake and Weedeater.
By Albert Mansour Receiving this new Raven CD I raised a worried eyebrow thinking that this was going to be one their Stay Hard…
Austin’s 6th Street area is the performance location for much of the musical side of South by Southwest—a massive interactive, film and music conference and festival. Historically, unsigned bands came to get noticed by suit ’n tie record label reps; however as it has evolved, signed underground and mainstream bands have dominated showcases, and schmoozin’ and boozin’ is underway as backroom deals and negotiation unfolds. Hell, it’s gotten to the point that Metallica played last year.
Jay Gorania recaps his take on this year’s SXSW Music Festival. In this first entry, he reviews the Relapse Records showcase as well as sets by Torche, Goes Cube and Goatwhore.
DoomDogs is a fair solid slab of thud-rock. I’d go so far as to say that, from the opening bombardier riff of “Fight the Greed”, DoomDogs is a notch or two above a lot of doom records I’ve subjected myself to lately.
Despite the fact that the album title reads as if Impetuous Ritual chose it using Death Metal Mad Libs, this album is anything but random in concept and performance. No, this soul-rending slab of doom-laced death metal is a calculated carnage machine of the first order.
Tate Bengston reviews the new album by Portal side-project Impetuous Ritual, released earlier this year by Profound Lore Records.
Helix has been known in the metal scene since the mid 80’s and has over the years made some incredible tracks. They played a good chunk of them Saturday night and it made for one hell a perfect night. Checking out this band live is a must for any metal fan into the 80’s scene. The hits kept on rolling one after another. Great set list. As I get to see so many bands in concert, the one thing which caught my attention with Helix was their level of professionalism shown on stage. No sloppy guitar solos, no scratchy feedback in the speakers. Basically a flawless gig.
Albert Mansour reviews the March 27, 2010 concert at Burlington’s Legendary Red Rooster club by Canadian hard rock/metal legends Helix.
I wasn’t expecting much from this album but am mildly impressed with a lot of the songwriting – full of huge hooks, great guitar work and of course Pearcy’s voice. Ratt brings back the classic sound of the 80s with great songwriting and great guitar solos but still for the most part inject some modern toughness to it. Now if they could just lose some of those cheeseball songs this would of been an absolute monster of an album.
Do not expect anything hi-fi from this Illinois based one man band of a rare breed of music that barely reaches the tolerable low-fi standard due to production that is more raw than that of early records from Satyricon and Darkthrone.