This blog specializes in heavy metal music and how it relates to Washington DC and the surrounding area. Featuring info on upcoming metal concerts in Washington DC, Baltimore and Virginia, as well as info on local bands, area concert venues, reviews of live gigs, and lots of give aways.
The king of goth shock rock, Marilyn Manson, is coming to the Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland on Tuesday the 1st of May! Support on this show will be by The Pretty Reckless. DCHeavyMetal.com is giving away a free pair of tickets to one lucky reader and all you’ve got to do is post a comment below telling me which song you’d like to hear Marilyn Manson play the most. I’ll pick one lucky winner at random (using Random.org) from all valid entries at 5pm EST on Friday 2 March 2012. Be sure that when you post you use a valid email you check regularly because I’ll need to contact you if you win. And don’t worry, I won’t add you to any annoying email lists or sell your address info or anything annoying like that. I hate spam too! You can only enter once, multiple entries will be disqualified. However, you can get your friends to all enter and have them bring you along if they win.
This will be Marilyn Manson’s first tour to support his upcoming album, Born Villain, which is coming out in May. So I’d imagine you’ll be able to hear some of those songs before the album is even out, pretty sweet! The album is a concept album and Marilyn Manson himself described it as a “suicide death metal” style of music, whatever that means. The opening act is The Pretty Reckless, a goth band fronted by Taylor Momsen who you may recognize as having played Jenny Humphrey on the TV show Gossip Girls. The band has been getting decent reviews and now they’re opening for the entire Marilyn Manson tour as well. If the contest is over when you read this, or you just can’t wait to get tickets, you can buy them online for $58.50 from Live Nation here. Check out this latest Marilyn Manson video, directed by Shia LaBeouf (the guy from the Transformers movies) of all people, below. It’s a trailer for a documentary about the making of the album that Shia shot, but it does have music in it too. Under that is a music video by The Pretty Reckless. And under that, leave a comment to enter!
If you follow DCHeavyMetal.com on Facebook or Twitter, you’ve probably already seen this today but in case you haven’t…
The Washington City Paper published a piece about me today in print and online. You can read it online here if you’d like. The piece was written by Leor Galil and the photo for the piece was shot by Darrow Montgomery in Mount Pleasant last Saturday, the 4th, while it was raining. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about those pictures of me in the corpse paint that are mentioned in the article, you can see those here. Ok enough about me, the next post will be about metal music, I promise!
The new Fillmore in Silver Spring, Maryland, hasn’t had a metal show since Anthrax and Testament played there in November, but they’ve just announced two killer metal concerts coming there in May. The Heritage Hunter tour with Opeth, Mastodon and Ghost on May 9th and the Ophidian Trek tour with Meshuggah, Baroness and Decapitated on May 22nd. Here at DCHeavyMetal.com we couldn’t pick which concert to give tickets away to, so we’re giving a pair of tickets away to both shows! All you’ve got to do to enter is make a comment at the bottom of this post saying which of these killer metal shows you’d like to enter to win tickets to. You can enter to win both if you’d like, but each concert will have a different winner. The winners will be picked at 4pm EST on Friday the 10th of February. One winner will be chosen at random with Random.org for each concert and they’ll win a pair of tickets to the show of their choice! Be sure you use a real email address you check regularly when you enter so I can contact you when you win, though your email doesn’t have to be in the comment itself. And don’t worry, I won’t add you to any email lists or sell your info to anyone, I hate that crap too. Now, here’s a bit more info on these concerts.
The Heritage Hunter tour has quite a line up! Opeth is Sweden’s premiere progressive metal band and while their last trip through the area saw them playing mostly softer material with a focus on their new album, Heritage, word has it this tour will feature a more “best of” style set list. I suppose we won’t know for sure until they’re actually playing it though. Opeth sold out their last area appearance on November 1st at Rams Head Live in Baltimore. Mastodon is probably the most famous band out of that big Georgia metal scene. Their latest album, The Hunter, looks to make them an even bigger name in the world of metal and you can bet they’ll be playing material from it as well. They also sold out their last area appearance which was at the 9:30 Club on November 27th. The opening act on this tour is Sweden’s mysterious Ghost. The members of the band all cover their faces and hide their identities and so the rumors have swirled around them about who might actually be in the band and what other bands those people are members of. Regardless, their debut album, Opus Eponymous, has won over critics and metal fans alike with their clean vocals and simple but catchy songs, all in the name of Satan of course. And you probably guessed it, but they also sold out their most recent area appearance when they headlined the Rock & Roll Hotel on January 19th. That’s right, this tour is made up of three bands who all sold out their most recent area appearances. If you missed any of them before now is your chance to see them live! If you want to be sure you get tickets before it sells out (which it seems likely to do considering the line up) you can buy tickets online now for $29.50 here.
The other metal show coming to the Fillmore in May is the Ophidian Trek tour with Sweden’s popular tech metal band Meshuggah headlining in support of their new album Koloss. Everyone knows these guys can shred and this will be the area’s first chance to hear any of their new material played live. If that wasn’t good enough for you they’ve also brought along another one of the premiere bands from the Georgia metal scene, Baroness! Baroness should have a new album out this year, hopefully in time for this tour, but even if they don’t the material on their first two albums is fantastic live. I saw them play the Rock & Roll Hotel back in November of 2009 and while that show was excellent, it will be great to see them on a bigger stage. The opening act is Decapitated, a Polish technical death metal band that has reformed with a new line up after a tragic bus accident in 2007 left the drummer dead and the vocalist in a coma. And you know what Meshuggah and Decapitated on the same bill means, you’re pretty much guaranteed to hear both Bleed and Spheres Of Madness played live at the same concert, hell yeah! If you want to get tickets to this show now and not have to worry about it selling out (you know, on the off chance you don’t win this contest) you can go ahead and buy your tickets online for $25 each by going here.
Well, those are your two choices. Check out these classic videos by the headliners and enter to win below!
I know I usually write really long posts but today I thought I’d just do a short post featuring a couple of very professionally produced music videos by two kick ass local metal bands. Both of them are brand new, released in January 2012. I was going to have a third music video on here but apparently someone’s record label got all pissy about a video being too offensive or violent so that one has been delayed. In its place I’ve posted a video that I shot myself of a local band playing a new song live on January 21st. Now, on to the videos…
First up is this killer new Fierce Allegiance video for their song Devil’s Knight. They’re a thrash band based here in Washington DC and they have a new full length album coming out later this year. They’re giving away an mp3 of the song in this video which you can get here. While you’re there, go ahead and give them a like on Facebook as well so you’ll know when they’ve got more new material.
Next we’ve got this zombie filled video by the guys in King Giant, a local southern styled stoner/doom metal band. The song is Appomattox, off of their brand new album Dismal Hollow. I highly recommend it (and their first full length, Southern Darkness, is really good too). You can buy Dismal Hollow on CD or vinyl here or buy it as an mp3 download from Amazon.com here. This epic video is 8 minutes long so sit back and enjoy the bloodbath!
While the last two videos were not only visually stunning but had great studio production as well, you’ll have to excuse the next video’s quality as I shot it myself on my little Panasonic handheld camera. This is the Northern Virginia based sludge band Auroboros playing their new song Tired Grip. It’s a great song that really builds up well and the song is going to be on their new EP which is scheduled to be out this spring. Sorry you can’t see the band’s frontman, Brian Blickle, too well in this video, the stage lighting was on everyone but him! However if you’d like to see them live yourself they’re scheduled to play with the French band Alcest at DC9 on Thursday, March 29th (more details on the concert calendar). Now give these guys a listen and become a fan of one of the area’s rising metal bands!
I hope you all enjoyed this post. Be sure to check back soon because tomorrow I’ve got a big new ticket contest to announce. Stay metal DC and remember, support the scene you’re a part of!
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