FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
Still scratching my head over London landing a stop on the Mastodon/Clutch/Graveyard tour while Toronto has to settle for a Graveyard side date. That said, the latter would be the band I most wanted to see of those three, so I saved me some cash and a trip westward by catching ’em at The Garrison instead.
Though they’re hardly a household name around here, I’d hafta say Ufomammut drew a pretty decent crowd to the Mod Club last night. Personally, I had been looking forward to seeing them for quite some time, and they really did deliver–visually as well as musically.
I haven’t been heading down to the States for shows very often since our dollar dropped far below par. But I still had a few bucks lying around from my last U.S. trip, and with two of my favourite American doom bands playing within driving distance, I figured it was worth the effort.
Electric Wizard’s Time to Die tour marked their first extended trek across North American in 13 years, and their first Toronto appearance in…forever!? No wonder it was such a hot ticket.
Melissa Cross’ reputation definitely precedes her. When it comes to instructional videos on metal vocals, hers was the first–and only–one that came to mind. But after watching The Zen of Screaming, I found myself agreeing with a few of the not-so-positive reviews on Amazon…
I’ve been toying with the idea of making an autobiographical solo album for a few years now…I just had to hit rock bottom first. The source material has always been inside of me, but it took a series of unfortunate events toward the end of last year to finally start drawing it out.
Over the past few weeks, many of my Facebook friends within the metal community were switching from their stage names to actual last names. But for me, when the axe came down, I thought I’d be clever and change my name to Grégoire Grousomme. And hey, it worked…for about 3 days.
Doesn’t feel like I did as much travelling last year as in years past. When our dollar was at par, a quick roadtrip to, say, Cleveland was pretty cost-effective. But when everything in the States costs 15% more loonies, well, that’s a bit of a bummer. Mind you, I still saw some solid outta-town shows in 2014…especially if you consider Hamilton outta town.
OK, it’s been a little while since I’ve done any blogging around here, but I wanted to put my year-end top 10 lists some place for posterity–and where people would actually read ’em. Lemme just say that 2014 was the craziest year in recent memory for me, and if I ever start making movies about my life, this’ll be where I begin. And hey, if nothing else, it’s bound to have a bitchin’ soundtrack…
Unless you’ve been listening to pop punk for the past couple weeks, you probably know that The Flatliners are Canada’s answer to Jethro Tull. No, they don’t have a flautist that likes to stand on one foot, but apparently, they’re the least metal band to be nominated for a Juno since…