FOR THE LOVE OF METAL
So, last weekend’s Sled Island festival was pretty solid. Sleep, The Sword, Dead Meadow, Bison B.C., Red Fang–I really can’t complain. Well, not about the lineup, anyways. But after defending Calgary as an affordable city to live in, I found out otherwise during my trip there last weekend…
One of the things we polled our writers on was to tell us what their Event of The Year was for 2010. Here is what they have sent us in response…
This Saturday and Sunday will see the city of Montreal play host to the second ever HEAVY MTL. As longtime Hellbound readers will remember, we ran a belated review of the 2008 edition last summer that featured photos by our own Adam Wills and a few write ups by me. This year Hellbound.ca has a group of our writers heading down yet again, including Albert Mansour, Adam Wills and Laura Wiebe Taylor. They’ll be able to tell you how great it was afterwards, but in the meantime here are my Top 10 reasons why you should head down to Montreal on Saturday if you are on the fence.
“By the time High on Fire hit the stage, the venue was thankfully almost at full capacity and despite not yet turning on the stage lights, when the crowd saw frontman Matt Pike stroll out in the darkness, bare chested, snaggle-toothed but still sexy as all hell, the crowd went nuts. While the trio had the least amount of members in comparison to the other bands, their sound was ten times more powerful and dense.”
Laina Dawes reviews the July 16th concert by HIGH ON FIRE, PRIESTESS, SKELETONWITCH at Toronto Ontario’s Opera House venue
A lot of bands attempting to pull off the same thing simply wind up sounding too eclectic to get anything of substance across. But Dark Ages, varied though it is in influence, is still a focused and precise monster, and it’s likely to be another one of those records that will wind up on many a Best-Of list come year’s end.
Kyle Harcott reviews Snakes For The Divine, the brand new studio album by High On Fire and their first for new label E1 Metal Records.
Four years after their debut effort Black Thunder—though they have a number of EPs and other releases—apocalyptic groove-metal brigade Doomriders unleash what is easily their most accomplished effort in sophomore affair Darkness Come Alive.
With the completion of the second season of Metalocalypse, Dethklok took the road for a full North American tour with co-headliners Mastodon and strong support acts Converge and High on Fire. For a band that seems far from serious, they put together quite the heavyweight lineup, casting some of the top live talents to join them on their conquest for real-life world domination.
Adam Wills reviews the recent Toronto tour stop by Dethklok, Mastodon and friends.
At barely 15 minutes, it’s an all-too brief preview, but that’s all it takes to instantly establish Howl as a band to watch for in late-’09 and 2010.
Recorded as demos this past April with Scott Ecklein, the four new songs and two covers aren’t just rough around the edges; they’re positively filthy, that barely-produced sound hearkening back to the glory days of tape-trading, the bare-bones mix enhancing the fierce performances. Simply put, as solid as they were before, Saviours has never sounded this great.
Adrien Begrand reviews three brand new, limited edition 7″ singles by Bay Area metal quartet Saviours.